Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a wonderfully Happy New Year!

I know this is an extremely short post, but it is 22:30 and I am wicked tired. Bed has a lasso around me ans is drawing me in quicly.

Good night everyone, and Happy Holidays!

What a gem

As some coders out there know, when it comes to coding, sometimes a project requires you to pick up another language. I have been actively playing with Perl for a little while now and have been working on a couple of scripts for work. Recently though, my Web Development job (outside of my day job) has had a realization regarding a project that we have in the works (sorry, cannot divulge any details). We are trying to figure out some of the details, and one of them is, what language would be best for the project. Well, in talking with my colleague ( who happens to own the company ), we are presently looking at Ruby as the language to code in.

I started looking at Ruby last week and must say....Wow....that is quite the interesting language. It is completely Object Oriented and written almost like you would speak (kind-of). My wife works at Barnes & Noble, so I utilized her deeper holiday special discount to pick up the "pickaxe" book at an incredible price.

I know that most people in the geek community have pretty much heard of Ruby, but in case you have had any incling of curiosity surrounding the language, here is the online version of the "pickaxe" book. This book would be the equivelant of the 'camel' book for Perl.

Here are some other good links that I have found (Ruby related), that I would like to share as well:

1 http://tryruby.hobix.com/ --> This is a small intro as well as a an interactive Ruby shell session to allow you to experiment. its pretty nice really.

2. http://www.rubyquiz.com/ --> This site has a bunch of quizes to which you will have to produce a solution. Nice way to practice your skills.

3. http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html --> A good Ruby language quick reference guide.

4. http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ --> Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. Another online "book-like" reference to ruby. There are some cartoons to make the learning a little more fun, but similarly good information.

5. http://www.rubyonrails.org/ --> The Ruby on Rails website. Rails is a framework for creating web based apps and interfaces.

6. http://rubymanual.org/ --> The Ruby reference manual.

I know that there are some developers/coders who are strictly loyal to their languages, and I fully understand that, but I also believe in learning all that I can, including other languages. So please, no flames or flame wars over this please as I just want to share what I have found.

I hope that you have found this interesting and informative. Please feel free to comment with your additions to the Ruby knowledge links.

Tis the season

Well, it is that time of year again. Time for egg nog, holiday parties, gift wrapping, shopping for gifts, and yes......... the advent calendar. This year's "Perl Advent Calendar" is available here for your viewing.

What's nice is that each day has a perl tid bit inside of it for your coding enjoyment. What's also nice is that you cannot skip ahead as the future dates are not allocated until their time comes.

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

In Defense of (Perl) Programming

Nobody can deny the fact that the Internet is absolutely flooded with information. If you want to know about it, you can more than likely find a link to it on the net. Being an aspiring Perl coder, I am always on the lookout for interesting articles on Perl coding.

Today I ran across the article called "Defensive Perl Programming" and found it to be quite good from the perspective of a beginner (so to speak). I know that there are some real Perl hackers out there and each believes in a particular style of coding, as does each of us. In fact, Randal Schwartz ( Merlyn ), wrote a book titled "Perl Best Practices", that I believe to be quite the bible of what to do and what not to do when coding.

It is with the assistance of resources like these, that one can learn to be a better coder and JAPH.