Please note that this is a non-standard meeting location.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Dominion Digital, 4101 Cox Rd, Glen Allen (Google Maps link)

Abstract

Despite our use of frameworks like Ruby on Rails being famous for conventional code, we still find ourselves with complicated and difficult to understand applications. Worse yet, our automated tests often end up just as complicated and slow. We have helpful design patterns to follow, so why does our code become more difficult to understand as our application grows? The cure for our pain is following DCI conventions to separate what our program *is* from what it does and to let our user’s mental model of our programs shine through.

Bio

Jim Gay is the Lead Developer for RadiantCMS and is a prolific contributor to it and many open-source projects. At Saturn Flyer LLC he’s built numerous Radiant sites, custom applications, and award winning graphic design. Jim has been a co-host of the Ruby 5 podcast, speaker at RubyNation, Rocky Mountain Ruby, and ArrrrCamp, is the founder of Arlington Ruby, and has been professionally building Ruby and Rails applications since 2006.

You can find Jim on twitter: @saturnflyer

Please note that this is a non-standard meeting location.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Dominion Digital, 4101 Cox Rd, Glen Allen (Google Maps link)

Abstract

The Ruby community is obsessed with testing, supposedly. In my experience about four out of five applications have either zero or completely ineffective test coverage.

Have the courage to change it. Whether your own projects or recovering someone else’s mess, let’s talk strategy:

• Starting with metrics
• Refactoring for understanding
• Comment-driven development
• The unit testing foundation
• Bug reports are your best integration tests
• Focusing on value
• Rescue projects are popping up everywhere, and a strategic testing approach can save the day.

Bio

Jeff started Jumpstart Lab in 2009. He travels the world preaching the good word of Ruby. Lately he’s been pushing an agenda of professional design practices with emphasis on object oriented architectures backed by solid testing. Plus he tell jokes.

You can find Jeff on twitter: @j3 or @jumpstartlab

Instead of our normal meeting in September, we're going to hold a Hack Night.

All levels welcomed

New to Ruby? That's OK! We'll have plenty of people there that can answer your questions. Very Comfortable with Ruby? Super! Come share your knowledge of the language with those just starting out. In-Between? Perfect! Come on out and have some fun.

Need some help

Having trouble getting started with Ruby? We can help.

Stuck on a bug? We can help.

Curious about Ruby, Rails? We can help.

Curious about Cucumber, RSpec, Test::Unit, etc.? We can help.

Curious about TDD, BDD? We can help.

Just wanna "talk shop" and enjoy a beer or two! We can help!

Spread the word

See you there and be sure to tell your friends.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Legend Brewing Company (map)

Next Month

Jeff Casimir, from Jumpstart Lab, will be presenting:

There Are No Tests

The Ruby community is obsessed with testing, supposedly. In my experience about four out of five applications have either zero or completely ineffective test coverage...

Have you ever wanted to own your job and build not only software but a business around it? Do you love writing code but hate writing it to make some other guy rich? Are you concerned about the pitfalls of striking out on your own? Is Ruby the right choice for entrepreneurs?

Our August meeting will feature a panel of Rubyists experienced in the worlds of coding and business. We'll have a lively discussion about why you might want to strike out on your own, what kind of opportunities exist for entrepreneurs, the downsides to be prepared for, and how Ruby fits into all this. You'll have a chance to ask your questions and get advice from people who have been there. And, we'll be doing this at Legend Brewing Company, so there will be plenty of beer to fuel our evening.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Legend Brewing Company (map)

Join us on Tuesday, July 12 for the CVREG Summer Social! We're going to have an informal meeting at Legend Brewery around 6:00 PM. Knock back some beers and talk about what interests you lately in the Ruby world with the usual suspects.

For our first meeting of the summer, we have a very special guest: Hiro Asari, a core contributor to JRuby. This will be a join meeting with the Richmond Java Users Group. Please register for the meeting here.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2011
• Time: 5:30 PM
• Location: Dominion Innsbrook Technical Center (5000 Dominion Blvd., Ground Floor Auditorium, Glen Allen, VA, 23060)

Abstract

As a Ruby implementation on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), JRuby provides a unique ability to interact with the vast array of Java libraries from Ruby (and vice versa).

In this talk, Hiro Asari, a JRuby committer, shows you how one can explore a Java library interactively with IRB (Ruby's REPL shell) with many examples.

Bio

Hiro Asari is a JRuby Support Engineer at Engine Yard, a PaaS company specializing in Ruby on Rails hosting. He has been involved with the JRuby project for 2 years.

Many thanks to Kirk (not Dirk) Richey for coming down and giving an excellent talk on Chef. Kirk did a great job of breaking down the nuances and warning against the pitfalls of learning Chef. I know many of us are exploring the cloud and will make good use of Kirk's introduction to the domain of distributed systems configuration.

Just to mention some upcoming events:

• RailsConf starts tomorrow.
• Next month we'll be doing a joint meeting with Richmond Java Users Group featuring Hiro Asari on JRuby.
• In July Jeff Casmir will be doing a talk on "blowing up your Rails views".
• Our August meeting will be a social, details coming soon.
• Finally, we're going to do a panel on Ruby entrepreneurs in the central Virginia region. If you run your own consultancy, freelance, or run a startup, or used to and went back to wage slavery, you might belong on our panel. Contact us if you're interested!

May features two very special speakers from Charlotte, NC: Jim Van Fleet, the original founder of CVREG, and Kirk Richey. They'll be discussing automated system configuration management strategies with an eye towards cloud architectures.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2011
• Time: 5:30 PM, talk starts at 6:00 PM
• Location: Weinstein Properties, 3961 D Stillman Parkway, Glen Allen, VA 23060

Abstract

The Cloud has all the mindshare when it comes to hosting and capacity planning, but what does it really get you? Kirk Richey will demonstrate how the combination of an abstracted provisioning API and configuration management with Chef can get your environments ready for action in no time flat, without having to depend on any vendors. That leaves you in control to plan the capacity, performance, and price of your operations.

Bios

Jim Van Fleet founded CVREG. Kirk Richey is an assistant organizer of Charlotte.rb.