Entries Tagged 'Ruby' ↓

Well, OS X now comes a lot closer to having a good Ruby and Rails, but I don’t like it.
What’s the deal with giving a default Rails DB configuration using SQLite3?!!
Lame. Sorry. Most folks doing Rails work use MySQL…

And as for the gems installed… uh where is Rmagick? Why isn’t Image Magick installed? X11 is now installed by default, so it only stands to reason…
Nice try guys, but unless this is Ruby and Rails for Apple’s internal use, there’s not much point. I expect to see a one-click replacement soon, but I’m going to go back and hook up my old installation the Hivelogic way. It just works better and corresponds better to what’s available on real-world hosting providers.

The gem choices are somewhat odd. Limited and odd. I’m dumping it and going with my own. Apple, (Laurent) I will leave yours in /usr/bin but I will not use it. Thanks anyway.

Here’s one by “Daniel” (I don’t know more, that’s all that was listed on the Rubyinside post)
Really nice, glossy, contemporary surface, and the forms have a futuristic feel, almost alien, but a little bit non-descript. The execution is good.

Posted on Ruby Talk by someone going by “Ce Jacas”:

Not bad! Very graphic.

Hmm… one maple leafed friend was not a fan of my designs. That’s fine. Not everyone will like everything. No big deal. There is more importantly a rationale for these designs.

First, the Ruby name is short, 4 letters, so it is a prime candidate to be part of any logo. A cut gem image is the most obvious and most sensible imagery/iconography to fit into a logo here. If there is a cut gem image in the design, there is one very important detail: in grayscale or black and white, the cut gem will be no more a Ruby than a Diamond or a Rhinestone. This supports keeping the name Ruby in the design. Without it, and without color, it could be Cubic Zirconium!

But what else could be in there instead of “Ruby”? Well, not much, because it must be something deeply connected to the Ruby language… “rb” or “.rb” is about the only other thing that really makes any sense. Anything else coming out of the Ruby language would be difficult to associate with the Ruby programming language immediately and for people who don’t know it at all. That excludes the language constructs completely, because they say nothing to the uninitiated.

This also pretty much eliminates “rb” or “.rb” because the uninitiated may not recognize it either. However, the argument for the file extension would be that it is short and (in English) sounds almost like the language name. Still not as identifiable as the short simple name itself.

Ok, so we need a cut gem and the Ruby name. That should pretty much be enough. Anything more would be overly complex for a logo, or overly specific for a general purpose language.

Other basics of logo design: often isometric angles, 1 or 2 colors, works well at multiple sizes (actual size range depends, but in this case, really stinkin’ small all the way up to bigger than me ), of course memorable and unique. Simplicity is often most overlooked, but the rule, “less is more” is truer with logos than with many other things.

None the less, I do hope that the logo chosen for Ruby will be improved a bit. There is no need or requirement for that to be the final version of the design. It could work with some fine adjustments.

For what it’s worth, here are the Ruby Logo Contest designs I did:

I don’t believe I sent this one in at all.

This one was submitted, I believe.

This one was submitted, and is definitely inspired by the coinage in the Zelda games.

This one was not submitted, but you can see why. It’s less than inspired, I think.

Finally, a Ruby book on design patterns! Wow. Some languages never get a book like that.

At this rate, Ruby will be published into the mainstream. The number of Ruby books must surely outnumber Python books and soon outnumber Perl books.

Next up, RubyCocoa book?

Ruby has a new logo. Yawn.
It’s not great. It’s not even much different from the old one, just a knockoff.
I certainly won’t wear any t-shirts of this.
Was this really the best of the lot?

Oh well. Matz is a language designer, not a visual designer.
It’s not like PHP has one worth a flip either.
Perl and Python rule the roost on this.

You gotta love a guy like _why. Why? Because he loves art, kids, Ruby, and humanizing computing and he’s not all fired up about things like _why Microsoft sucks or whatnot. But even more importantly he recently said something about brevity and didn’t quite seem to realize how right he is or _why he is right about _what he’s right about!.
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Wow. Xcode and Leopard are going to be better! Xcode now apparently does PHP and Ruby and Rails in addition to XHTML and CSS. Let’s just hope they stole a lot of keyboard shortcuts from TextMate… Can’t wait to get my hands on this cat.
And, unlike Microsoft and Windows, it’s all freely included in OS X 10.5 Leopard !
How can anybody say that Macs are more expensive, when all the dev tools are free !?
I know Windows dev tools are anything but free, and no way they’ve ever been this cool.

One thing I’ve always wanted: syntax highlighting that actually shows scope!

Looks like Objective-C 2.0 has borrowed a bit from Ruby! Those Apple engineers, they just kick ass at making good stuff with end-users in mind.

Learn more at:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/developer/

Oh, and let’s hope that the inclusion of PHP and Ruby and Rails means that those tools will be updated regularly (or at least update-able ). After all, web software changes rapidly, and with the impending releases of Ruby 2.0 and Rails 2.0 in the next few months to a year, we can’t just have a one-time installation. We will need the ability to update gems and such.

Now all we can ask for is that Apple gets into making it better for developers who want to make games for the Mac. Investing in some game libraries (cross-platform…?) or even say Nintendo (the two companies would be soooo beautiful together…)…?

So, what’s the next big thing gonna be? TAG SPAM. That’s right Continue reading →