Nintendo DS Homebrew Hackery, Aakraman-A Ruby-based war game, Load testing
Web apps with Erlang, and Android Plugin Internals-four parallel tracks at
DevCamp 08 organized in the Bangalore facility of global technology professional
services firm, ThoughtWorks, besides 'lightning tracks' on topics ranging from
debugging a Ruby code to express methods to prepare omelette. Some 250 odd
developers spent an entire Saturday brainstorming on coding apps, creating
sample codes, discussing the future of Ruby, ravaging the reputation of Java.
Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks, was all praise. Most of the
discussions were centered around the sudden growth of Ruby as the chosen
language.
According to Sidu Ponnappa, a participant and organizer, Yarv, the Ruby
interpreter currently in its version 1.9 is all set to give a hug facelift to C
Ruby and J Ruby. But like most programmers, his biggest concern was that
first-time programmers who use Ruby are likely to get carried away with its
flexible and 'no boundaries' nature, and will end up wasting lot of time
entangling themselves trying to sort of their own bugs. It is a better idea, to
make a gradual shift from Java to Ruby, since, a frustrated Java programmer is
the only one who can savour the sweet freedom that Ruby gives.
DevCamp concluded on that Ruby has better possibilities than Java, and can
create apps across many unexplored verticals.
Vishnu Anand