I was riding today with my friend who is a Java developer and we were having some geek chat about the current IT market (bubble). He asked, “Is there anything you can do in Ruby on Rails that you can’t do in Java?” My answer was “not really”. Of course that wasn’t the answer he was expecting from me especially that I am always bragging about RoR.

I explained to him that he could do much more things in Java due to its maturity and integration capabilities but these functionalities come at expensive price. Java/J2EE skills are hard to master and Java projects take more time to implement compared to projects written in newer languages such as Ruby.

Every once in a while I find a “Java vs Ruby on Rails” online post and I realize that there is a big confusion about the differences and similarities between the two languages. In fact, I think RoR is more likely to be adopted by Java programmers than PHP programmers because they both adhere to the same standards and practices from OO to MVC to Active Records, etc..

Java is more suited for corporate environments with legacy and heterogeneous systems. Java also is backed by big companies such as IBM, Oracle, BEA, Sun, etc.
So if you are seeking a corporate job, then probably Java/J2EE skills are more likely to get you one than RoR.
Unlike Java RoR is still young and is not yet accepted in big traditional companies.

For the rest of us, RoR is much better fit especially in agile environments with short Software Life Cycles and with web2.0 focus.

After all, learning another programming language is easy and fun. And the more languages you know the more valuable you are.

I am heading tomorrow to BarCamp Texas in Austin. I am leaving Dallas around 10:00am and will be driving with both Callie and Cade.

We will be posting some pictures to Tactic@flickr and TMC@flickr live from Thistle Cafe

We are getting closer and closer to launch TMC (Tag My City) website. We’ve been doing a lot of last minute fixes and enhancements before we go live on Sept 1, 2006.

We are also getting ready for BarCamp Texas in Austin.

I guess that’s it for now I gotta go write some code..

If you work in the HR business, you probably know that finding talented and qualified people is not an easy task. Typical job boards such as monster and dice were designed to provide an electronic searchable resumes. But they didn’t introduce innovative ways to find talented people.

The current resume format is outdated and strict. It doesn’t allow candidates to freely represent themselves and showcase their talent.

I tried to find a solution for this problem by creating Things I Can Do, the website uses tagging and weblog-like profiles to provide users with the right tools to express their skills and knowledge.

Users can create profiles, upload pictures, add skills and tag them with keywords.
They can also rate and add comments to each other�s skills.

The website is still in beta version and It’s due to a major makeover release.

Cade and I are planning on taking this website to the next level by creating a better resume structure. The new release will support more functionalities such as Pod-Casting, RSS feed, Skype integration and Microformats support.

Feedback is appreciated…

If you need a Linux advanced messaging and calendaring software then Scalix 11 might be the right solution for you.

Scalix 11 pre-release version is available for download (for evaluation purpose only). The production release will be offered in November.

They offer packages for RedHat , Suse and Debian (works on Ubuntu)

Scalix offers both free and commercial lines of their product. It depends on your needs and whether you need support or not.

Here is a summary of their features:

• Full-featured email and calendar server
• AJAX based web client for accessing both email and calendar
• Connectivity support for Outlook and Evolution
• Mobile client access for advanced wireless email and PIM support
• Web services programming interfaces which makes it easier for developers to integrate the product with other applications.

I will be installing and evaluating this software… It seems like Ximda mail is about to find a new home.

I was reading on cnet that Lenovo and Novell are planning to offer Suse on ThinkPad. This move made me believe Suse is still holding up in the tough OS market.

I was once one of the first adopters of Linux Suse on the desktop. At that time Suse was the leader of the Linux desktop by providing an easy to use eye candy desktop environment. Suse used KDE as its default desktop system while RedHat (it’s biggest competitor) used Gnome.

I was the only one of my friends to adopt Suse over RedHat or Mandrake. For me Suse desktop was superior. Suse developers tried to pay attention to details and to make things look nice yet functional. Unfortunately Linux early adopters were hackers and system administrators who wanted Linux to be difficult and exclusive so obviously Suse wasn’t their first choice.

Things have changed a lot; hackers and power OS users now appreciate the clean look of their desktops. The biggest example is the rise of mac systems sales. However, this is didn’t help Suse achieve better place in the desktop market because Ubuntu – the new Linux super star – was born and it was rapidly becoming the most popular Linux distro.

Ubuntu’s biggest advantage over Suse is the fact that Ubuntu is based on Debian. So you are getting the most stable Linux distro, the most successful packaging system (Debian package) and a very nice looking and easy to use desktop.

IBM has always been helping Suse to gain leads in the OS market by investing money in Novell (the current Suse owner) and by supporting Suse on IBM’s hardware and software products. But IBM also has been helping Ubuntu supporting IBM software; in fact, Ubuntu is already certified to run DB2.

As Ubuntu keeps rising in the desktop and expanding in the enterprise, Suse seems to have internal problems. And the people who once started Suse are no longer part of Novell!

Web2.0 has taken the news headlines from operating systems. Yeah the media always gets excited about new things. But web2.0 has a lot to offer, now you can use AJAX, Rails, PHP, etc. to build web applications that can do almost everything desktop applications can do. In addition, you get access to these application from anywhere with internet connection. You no longer need to be concerned about OS support, data backup or software upgrade.

Talking about OS war these days is like talking about the cold war. It’s part of the past�

This is what I saw when I went to YouTube website..

At least they tried to be funny about it.