A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
posted by Artw on May 8, 2009 - 47 comments

Speaking of Edward Tufte (see below), sparklines are a type of information graphics characterized by their small size and data density named by Tufte. Sparklines were used by sites reporting the 2008 election and were first introduced on MeFi in 2005. There are now several ways to put sparklines on your own web site including: a simple jQuery plugin, a downloadable PHP library, a dynamic generator using a Python CGI program, and even a library for Ruby on Rails.
posted by netbros on Feb 27, 2009 - 8 comments

Riding the Waves of interest in MVC web frameworks such as Rails, Django, TurboGears, and Cake, comes the latest entrant: Ruby Waves. Interesting features include request lambdas, hot patchable, nestable templates, app reusability, and decoupled controller/view. Is the proliferation of MVC projects helping to push innovation forward? Or pointlessly reinventing the wheel? (via RubyInside)
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Feb 29, 2008 - 39 comments

In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark! Now with 100% more MeFi.
posted by signal on Apr 26, 2007 - 27 comments

Ruby on Rails 1.1 is out and you can pretend you know what Ruby on Rails is after reading the overview on the homepage or checking out the screencasts if you have some time. Some might recognize this from prior posts (perhaps, undeservedly) or from some of the web applications that were developed with it.
posted by jmhodges on Mar 27, 2006 - 36 comments

Warning: Geek Hype Alert! Artima.com has just launched a new on-line magazine, Ruby Code & Style. They already host Web `zines for two long-time, corporate powerhouse languages, C++ and Java. For their next subject one might have expected them to go with Python or perhaps Perl, but instead they picked Ruby.

Need more proof Ruby's time has come? The Fifth International Ruby Conference, to be held this week in San Diego, CA, is sold out. The attendance is triple what is was last year. Any readers of Slashdot here likely do not need yet another mention of Ruby on Rails, which has spread like wildfire. But Agile Web Development with Rails is currently in the top 500 over-all sales rank on Amazon, and currently #2 in the Computers and Internet Programming section.

While MeFi tends to focus on more socially-broad topics, I know there is a cadre of geeks here. So, tell me: Is this it for Perl, Python, and PHP? Are the P* languages to be sent packing? Or is this swell of Rubymania just a passing fad, the results of overblown blog hype? And what other programming languuages might be lurking to become The Next Big Geek Thing? (I'm still waiting for Lisp to assume return triumphant.)
posted by Ayn Marx on Oct 10, 2005 - 87 comments

You've heard of Greasemonkey (which allows you to remix web pages in firefox), you might also remember the Ruby Programming Language that all of the cool kids are talking about these days. Mix the two together, make it useable through any modern browser (using a proxy), and voila MouseHole!
posted by freshgroundpepper on Sep 3, 2005 - 9 comments

Now THIS is an eCommerce shopping cart. Holy crap. Ruby and Ruby on Rails: You officially have my attention. (Documentation includes a free first edition book. Intro for OS X friends fiends) and all.
posted by spock on Feb 25, 2005 - 65 comments