Instiki is a Ruby on Rails wiki, created by the famous David Heinemeier Hansson

This wiki doesn’t try to match options offered by more mature products such as MediaWki. Instead, it focuses on simplicity and ease of use.

Lately I’ve been playing with it to create a public wiki and private one and the only thing I can say about it is … AMAZING.

If you know how to use textile then you will love it, you can actually use this wiki as a CMS to build websites.

I am thinking about Instiki more as a framework rather than a final product.

There are so many things that could be developed on top of this great and simple wiki. Just imaging the possibilities…. no seriously this is an awesome application.

So if you are a Ruby hacker and you haven’t looked at Instiki source code yet, then you know what you need to do this weekend ;) Don’t forget to buy your favorite bottle of wine too. Because Ruby goes best with wine :)

I’ve been lately digging in RubyForge trying to find good open source projects built using Ruby. Unfortunately there are only few mature projects out there. However, there are plenty of new ones with great potentials.

The adoption of Ruby in open source projects is as important as adopting it in the enterprise.

There are so many reasons to use Ruby to build open source software, here are few:

• Fast gorwing community of developers and supporters
• Short learning curve
• Easy to read syntax, allowing developers to understand the code with minimum documentation
• Posses an excellent MVC framework (Rails) making it a great fit for web applications.
• Supports trendy technologies such as RSS, SOAP, XML, REST and AJAX.
• High code reusability by utilizing plugins and engines

And of course Ruby is open source after all …

Jason has created very nice logs for DoR (Dallas on Rails).

Which one is your favorite?

I just started a new google group called Dallas on Rails

My first post there ..

Hi guys,

I am starting this group to be a place for exchanging Ruby on Rails
development experience in Dallas, TX.

Developers, entrepreneurs and Rails fans will find here good
information about how to build web applications or start up businesses
around Rails and web 2.0 in general.

Members should be able to discuss new and exciting technologies such as
AJAX, Microformats, PodCasting, RSS etc.

I am working on developing DallasOnRails.org to be the home of this
group .. stay tuned

If you are in Dallas and you have interests in Ruby on Rails or Web2.0, then this group is perfect for you .

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.

Most of rails adopters have been busy upgrading their rails due to the discovered security risk. If you have not upgraded yet then you should do it now… seriously right now. The security problem seemed to be very nasty to the point that the Ruby on Rails core team didn’t want to discuss it publicly.

Of course as soon as I knew about the issue yesterday, I upgraded all my servers to Rails 1.1.5.
it turns out that the rush released Rails 1.1.5 didn�t actually solve the problem and there was another problem in rails routing inside app/config/routes.rb. So I had to do some changes manually to fix this issue…Well I just got notified that there is another release Rails 1.1.6 that it’s ready for upgrade.

I know that a lot of people are angry right now, I understand where they are coming from but this is something to expect from young products with fast development cycles like Rails. However, I think the rails team should apply more testing and QA practices to insure the quality of Rails. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from FreeBSD and the way they control the security of their code.

I hope this security problem is not going to turn off people from adopting rails.

gotta go to upgrade..

Rails is celebrating its second birthday. If you like object oriented languages, you value open source, and you are getting tired of web development complexity, then Rails is the perfect solution for you.

Rails is not a programming language, it’s more like a framework. For Java/J2EE programmers RoR(Ruby on Rails) is Struts + Hibernate + Xerces + Axis. etc. Where Ruby is the actual programming language (like Java).

Unlike PHP, RoR uses MVC (Model – View – Controller) and Active Record design patterns making it cleaner and more organized than PHP.

From entrepreneurs point of view, rails is the perfect implementation framework for web applications. Using rails will allow you to lower your cost and improve your productivity. Web development projects can now be implemented in a more efficient way eliminating the need for VC(Venture Capital) investments.

Do you feel the rails fever? Start here