From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2003-06-22T05:02:18+09:00
Subject: Euruko 2003 (1st European Ruby Conference) news


1st day over.

Had the following presentations:

* The Rubyesque API -- Hal Fulton
What makes a good API in Ruby?

* Garbage in Extensions -- Tobias Peters
How to play nice with the garbage collector in Ruby extensions --
(includes: how does the GC work, patterns of managing extension library
objects, using swig, common misconceptions)

* RDF storage for Ruby: the case of Samizdat -- Dmitry Borodaenko 45
min   Samizdat is an open publishing and collaboration engine ba sed
on RDF model and using Apache mod_ruby, Ruby, PosgreSQL via Ruby/DBI,
and YAML. Samizdat RDF storage was started from ideas in Dan Brickley's
RubyRDF, but was written from scratch with more focus on relational
storage and performance and less focus on XML and other serialization.
The talk will describe Samizdat RDF storage design, underlying algorithms,
and use cases.


Open space: did the planning game (papers on the wall :-) 
Discussions:
 * High-performance computing, druby, etc
 * Ruby for "other" platforms: PDA, Windows. Focus on multi-platform
   GUI, references to jruby, etc

 * Ruby & the world (non-technical): quick and dirty summary

What do we need to increase Ruby awareness?
  * documentation
  * RAA:
    - categorization, keywords, etc
	- lower entry cost: interface
	- rate on dependencies: the more people depend on you the better you
	  are (or should be :-)
  * lessons from CPAN?
  * too much duplication: why 3 if cpan makes it w/ 1?
    <= less maturity. Do we need 10 years to make another cpan?
  * comm. problem: division linux devels/ windows users
    have to think of the end user (?)
  * do we really want a killer app? find a niche market?
    hardly doable if we're a general language and act as glue, which you
	don't see when it works right
  * get beginners: why would they choose Ruby instead of say Visual Basic?
  * need bolts-included dist?
  * should include decent editor for windows within?
  * Java lessons
    - ads: we'll never get them
	- university: definitely. We've got  Stefan Schmiedl to try it :)
  * try to leverage already existent technologies to be buzzword
    compliant yet still in the ruby way: JRuby 

-- 
 _           _                             
| |__   __ _| |_ ___ _ __ ___   __ _ _ __  
| '_ \ / _` | __/ __| '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \ 
| |_) | (_| | |_\__ \ | | | | | (_| | | | |
|_.__/ \__,_|\__|___/_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|
	Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

We come to bury DOS, not to praise it.
	-- Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu