Hongli Lai and Ninh Bui, from Phusion, shaked the Rails world a few days ago. They unleashed the Holy Grail of Rails deployment: mod_rails which was received with much fanfare, and they deserved it.

They finally settled the big issue that embarrassed Railers in the past. This will also relieve dozens of hosting services that were clueless on how to solve this equation. Now, those two computer science students are above them all with this clever solution. And they have more to come.

I was very fortunate to be able to interview them. I think this is the second interview, InfoQ broke the news first with this other interview which I highly recommend to understand more of the inner gears of Passenger. They are very easy going and it was a pleasure to talk to them.

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Chris is a very accessible and easy-going guy, and I just got him out of AIM and started the interview right away. For those of you who never heard of ‘Chris Wanstrath’, he is also known for Err the Blog and recently as one of the guys behind the Github phenomenon.

He answered everything in color detail and we speak a lot about his open source projects, performance, scalability and, of course, lots of Git and Github stuff. Hopefully it will make people even more excited with how the Ruby/Rails community is moving things forward all the time.

aos leitores brasileiros: assim que tiver tempo irei traduzir esta entrevista.

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Monday, Apr 1st, I was invited to participate in a series of interviews being published at FiveRun’s blog, called TakeFive. It was just published.

Thanks a lot for FiveRuns for choosing me, I am flattered as I don’t yet consider myself in the same luminary league as Chad Fowler, Peter Cooper, Pat Eyler, Satish Talim and all the others in the series. I hope to get up there, though :-)

This series revolves around 5 questions out of 15 that I could choose. Being prolific – as you well know – I actually answered all 15 of them. So I will publish here the remaining 10 that didn’t make into the interview. Hope you like’em.

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This week I interviewed another person from the Microsoft camp, Scott Hanselman. I know him from his podcast Hanselminutes. In one episode he interviewed both Martin Fowler and David Hansson at last year’s RailsConf, a truly remarkable conversation.

He also posted a great screencast about Microsoft’s new alternative MVC framework and I thought it would be great to have him at my blog to talk about technology and web frameworks. As I said before I think that we should not become alienated about what’s going on in other fronts and Scott is a very forward thinking and open minded person as well.

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English Readers: click here

Foi Avi Bryant que evangelizou a idéia de “tartarugas o caminho todo”, querendo dizer que para uma linguagem se considerar ‘completa’ ela deveria ser capaz de estender a si própria. Então, o mundo ideal teria Ruby sendo estendido por Ruby, não em C. JRuby vai tão longe quanto pode construindo um sandbox para código Ruby rodar sobre a JVM. Por mais legal que seja, ainda precisamos de Java para podermos estendê-la.

Entra Rubinius e seu autor Evan Phoenix, atualmente contratado em tempo integral pela EngineYard. Rubinius pega pesadamente emprestado dos conceitos de virtual machine de Smalltalk e faz o menos possível em C somente para conseguir o boot inicial e todo o resto é desenvolvido em Ruby puro.

Rubinius responde a várias questões sobre o futuro do Ruby MRI mas também levanta diversas perguntas que espero que possamos responder hoje nesta entrevista com o próprio Evan.

Então, vamos começar.

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It was Avi Bryant that evangelized the neat idea of “turtles all the way”, meaning that for a language to be called ‘complete’ it should be able to extend itself. So, the ideal world would have Ruby being extended in Ruby, not in C. JRuby goes as far as it can building up a sandbox for Ruby code to run under the JVM. As cool as it is, we still rely on Java to fully extend it.

Enter Rubinius and its author Evan Phoenix, currently a full-time employee for EngineYard. Rubinius borrows heavily from Smalltalk’s concepts of a virtual machine and does as little as possible in C just for the bootstrap and all the rest is developed over pure Ruby.

Rubinius answers lots of questions about going forward over the current Ruby MRI but also raises several other questions that I hope we can nail down today in this interview with Evan himself.

So let’s get started.

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Last year we had our local event WebDevCamp SP’07, where Manoel Lemos, from the sucessful BlogBlogs introduced us to his friend James Crane-Baker, co-founder of the RedeParede (literally, “NetWall”), a classified Web 2.0 web-service written in Ruby on Rails.

Recently he got in touch with me about releasing his services APIs to the Rails community and therefore I decided to publish more about these Santa Barbara, CA based guys. They are credible people and James actually lived in Rio de Janeiro for a while, so he understands our Latin culture better than the average american, which is good as they plan to cover not only Brazil, but Latin America. I hope everybody can take a look at what they are doing as it sounds very promising, and success cases like this only augments the importance of our community as a whole.

So, here goes James himself explaining his product:

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Acabamos de lançar o 4o Episódio do Ruby on Rails Podcast Brasil. Um dos assuntos que mencionei neste episódio foi sobre o serviço RedeParede. Deixe-me explicar em mais detalhes.

Durante a WebDevCamp SP, no ano passado, o Manoel Lemos, do BlogBlogs nos apresentou um amigo seu, James Crane-Baker, que fundou a startup RedeParede, um website feito em Ruby on Rails para classificados no estilo Web 2.0.

Recentemente ele me comunicou que está para liberar as APIs do seu serviço para nossa comunidade Rails e por isso resolvi publicar mais sobre o que esse pessoal de Santa Barbara, CA está fazendo. O James morou no Rio por um tempo também e compreende mais sobre nossa cultura melhor do que o americano médio. Seu serviço deve cobrir toda a América Latina. Espero que todos dêem uma olhada nesse serviço, parece algo muito promissor, e cases de sucesso como esse só ajudam nossa comunidade como um todo.

Segue a palavra para o próprio James explicar o RedeParede:

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The Ruby Way is the undisputed must-have book in any Rubyist bookshelf. Rather than being a ‘reference’ book it explains what it takes to really dive into the intricacies and marvels of the Ruby programming style.

Today I am very happy being able to engage in a conversation with one of my favorite authors, Hal Fulton. This was a great chat and I know people will be delighted as well. He is one of the Ruby veterans and certainly has a lot of experience to share. So, let’s start:

AkitaOnRails: First of all, it is a tradition at my blog to ask for the guest’s background. How long you’ve been at the programming career? How did you first get there? What inspires you about the computer world?

Hal Fulton: I started college as a physics major, but I found that I was taking computer courses for fun. I switched to computer science and the rest was history.

Unlike most younger people now, I never was really exposed to computers until I was sixteen, because personal computers were much less common then. I was hooked right away. I saw the computer as a “magic box” that could do anything I was smart enough to instruct it to do. Really I still feel that way about it.

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English readers, click here

O Ruby Inside é um dos maiores websites de Ruby/Rails disponível e uma grande fonte de notícias. Seu criador é o empreendedor britânico Peter Cooper, também autor do livro recentemente publicado Beginning Ruby, from Novice to Professional, uma excelente fonte para qualquer um querendo aprender a linguagem Ruby.

Peter fala sobre Ruby on Rails, negócios, iniciantes e, como um exclusivo de última hora, ele comenta o recente episódio nuclear do Zed que chocou muitas pessoas da comunidade. Apenas para deixar claro, Peter respondeu minhas perguntas antes do Ano Novo, é somente a última pergunta que foi adicionada depois.

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Ruby Inside is one of the greatest Ruby/Rails website available and a great source of news. Its creator is the British entrepreneur Peter Cooper, also the author of the recently published book Beginning Ruby, from Novice to Professional, an excellent source for anyone willing to learn the Ruby language.

Peter speaks about Ruby on Rails, business, novices and, as a last-minute exclusive, he comments on the recent Nuclear Zed episode that shocked a lot of people in the community. Just to clarify, Peter answered my questions before New Years Eve, it’s only the last question that was added today.

Once again, I deeply apologize the brazilian audience because I didn’t have time to translate this into Portuguese today, but I will do very soon. Stay tuned.

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English readers, click here

Traducción en Español

Como prometi depois da entrevista com Avi Bryant , aqui vai outra grande conversa com Adrian Holovaty, o conhecido criador do framework web Django escrito em Python.

Para mim esta é uma matéria importante porque eu sempre disse que tecnologia não tem que ser sobre divórcio. Tecnologia é sobre integração. Sou um programador e evangelista Ruby on Rail tempo integral, mas acima de tudo, eu tento ser um ‘bom’ programador. E bons programadores reconhecem boa tecnologia e a conquista de seus criadores. E o Django de Adrian é uma dessa conquistas excepcionais que merecem a atenção e o sucesso.

Então, como meu primeiro post do ano (publicado às 0:01h!), gostaria de celebrar as grandes mentes da nossa comunidade de ‘desenvolvimento’, esperando que os bons desenvolvedores usem seu tempo criando grandes tecnologias em vez de desperdiçar em guerrinhas inúteis.

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Traducción en Español

As I promised after the Avi Bryant interview, here’s a great conversation with Adrian Holovaty, well known creator of the Django web framework written in Python.

For me this is an important piece because I always say that technology doesn’t have to be about divorce. Technology is about integration. I am a full-time Ruby on Rails developer and evangelist, but above all, I try to be a ‘good’ programmer. And good programmers acknowledge good technology and their creators achievements. And Adrian’s Django is such a remarkable achievement that deserves the attention and success.

So, as my very first post of the year (published at 0:01hs!), I would like to celebrate the great minds of our ‘development’ community, wishing that the good developers use their time creating great technology instead of wasting it in useless flame wars.

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For english-speaking readers, click here for the original version

Se ainda não leu, dê uma olhada na Parte 1 onde conhecemos mais sobre Avi Bryant e seu incrível produto Dabble DB. Nesta Parte 2 Avi elabora um pouco mais suas opiniões e pontos de vista acerca de tecnologia. Uma leitura muito inspiradora para todo programador.

Como sempre diso – e Avi é competente em apontar -, Ruby tem seus problemas – muitos sendo melhorados no Ruby 1.9, JRuby e Rubinius. Avi nos dá boas razões de porque Smalltalk é mais uma grande plataforma para se aprender, trazendo décadas de evolução e maturidade. Então, aqui vai, a versão completa da entrevista.

E fiquem ligados! Espero ter Evan Phoenix, Hal Fulton, Peter Cooper e Adrian Holovaty como meus próximos convidados. Muito material para começar 2008 em grande estilo!

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If you didn’t read it, take a look at Part 1 where we get to know more about Avi Bryant and his amazing product Dabble DB. In Part 2 Avi goes a little bit more in elaborating his technology opinions and points of view. It’s a very insightful reading for every programmer.

As I always say – and Avi is competent pointing out -, Ruby has its drawbacks – most of them being improved on Ruby 1.9, JRuby and Rubinius. Avi gives us good reasons why Smalltalk is yet another great platform to learn, bringing back decades of evolution and maturity. So, here goes, the unabridged version of the interview.

And stay tuned! I hope to have Evan Phoenix, Hal Fulton, Peter Cooper and Adrian Holovaty as my next guests. Lot’s of material to begin 2008 in great style.

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