Software Free

Note: This item has also been posted on Rails Inside. I don’t tend to make it a habit of crossposting items, but as Rails Inside is still very new, I am sure many Ruby Inside readers will want to know about it. Beware, however, you will need to subscribe to Rails Inside to get the skinny on new Rails events in the long term :)

It’s been years in the making, but it has finally arrived.. Rails Inside, the Rails-only equivalent of Ruby Inside! Featuring an all-new template, Rails Inside presents information in a similar format and style to Ruby Inside but with a focus entirely on the Ruby on Rails scene. If Rails is your main thing, or a significant part of your development life, get over there and subscribe (by RSS or e-mail - the e-mail version actually looks surprisingly nice I’ve found).

erubycon is a Ruby conference taking place in Columbus, Ohio between August 15 and 17, 2008. The e seemingly stands for “enterprise” with The Enterprise (and not the Star Trek variety) being a key focus. Earlybird registration is $199.00 and is open till July 4.

The speaker list is quite substantial and includes Neal Ford (Thoughtworks), Stuart Halloway (Relevance, Inc), Jim Weirich, Josh Holmes, Giles Bowkett (is there a conference Giles doesn’t speak at?), Evan Light, Anthony Eden, Michael Letterie (IronRuby), Brian Sam-Bodden, Jeremy McAnally (ENTP and the Humble Little Ruby Book) and Lance Carlson (Ruby Skills).

Ruby on Rails 2.1: What’s New? (PDF, 2MB) is a free e-book written by Carlos Brando (with help from Marcos Tapajos and Daniel Lopes). It was initially written in Brazilian Portuguese (find the original version here), but this version is an English translation by several community members.

Merbunity is a new site dedicated to “news, projects, and tutorials” related to the Merb Web framework (increasingly a common alternative to Rails). It’s very early days, but it’s well designed, and the initial content is good. It feels a little like a Ruby Inside for Merb. Great job! Among the launch content, and of almost immediate interest to Mac-based Merb developers, is Dr. Nic Williams’ TextMate bundle for Merb.

Yee-haw! The Ruby Hoedown enters its second year, taking place in Huntsville, Alabama on August 8th and 9th, 2008. It’s billed as the “Ruby conference for the South” and is sponsored by Engine Yard. Keynote speakers so far are David A. Black (of Ruby Central fame) and Chris Wanstrath (of GitHub fame). Registration is $149 until June 2nd.

And a Bonus: Toronto Rails Project Night!

Never one to let us down on the ingenuity front, Why The Lucky Stiff (author of the Poignant Guide and creator of Shoes) is busy working on a system that can convert Ruby 1.9 bytecode to Python bytecode (and from there into regular Python by way of Python’s decompilation facilities). It’s exactly the sort of thing that could take off with more eyes looking at it, and Why has made it available on GitHub. This technique isn’t likely to unite Python and Ruby in any deep and meaningful way (to the point of a shared interpreter), but the research and experiments involved are worth a try.