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...

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 14 September
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: Capital Ale House

Party Time!

Hey folks, after a hot, hot, hot Virginia summer, I think it’s social time. So, for September’s meeting we’ll be gathering at the Capital Ale House in Innsbrook for cold beverages, mostly ok food, and interesting conversations about what we did over the summer and all the cool technology we’re messing with.

Be sure to bring a friend and spread the word.

See you there!

Announcements:

• October Meeting (12 Oct): Matthew Bass and A/B Testing
• JRuby Conf 2010 (1-3 Oct): http://jrubyconf.org Follow on Twitter: @jrubyconf There’s a User Group Discount Available too: USERGROUP2010

Meeting Details

Date: Thursday, 19 August
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: INM United

Meeting Note:

There is no meeting on our regularly schedule date of 8 August 2010.

Abstract:

From http://whyday.org : On August 19, 2009, Why the Lucky Stiff withdrew from the online community. We in the Ruby community wish him well, but we really miss him.

So come on out, ready to hack some Ruby code. If you need help setting up your laptop, no problem. There will be someone there ready to help. Bring some friends too. The more the merrier.

Announcements:

No announcements at this time.

As 2009 comes to a close, we have one of our own stepping up the plate to talk to us about URI’s and their lifecycle.

Abstract

“Rack::Route301, A rack module to manage old routes”

Moving an existing site from the old and busted to the new hotness involves a million little details. Removing that old table layout, scrubbing the data, selling or sneaking in a new feature or two, etc., etc., all the way down to the zoot. But when all is said and done, where did mysupersite.net/lolfrogz?color=blu&cuteness=-4 go?

URI lifetime matters.

We’ll talk about a few solutions, from .htaccess, to application controllers in RoR, to Rack. And finish with Rack::Route301, an very young Rack based solution that Matt will be releasing as an open source project.

Location

Tuckahoe Public Library, 1901 Starling Drive in Richmond.

Look here for directions: http://www.henricolibrary.org/Libs/tu.html

Be sure to spread the word and invite all you know. This meeting is not to be missed.

In conjunction with the RJUG, Andy Hunt [1], of Pragmatic Programmer fame, will be in Richmond to talk about: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor your Wetware [2].

This session is not exclusively about programming but about how we learn and how best to learn. Therefore, I would encourage you to invite everyone you know.

Please register at the link below so we can have an accurate head count for food and seating.

http://www.richmondjug.com/event/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning-andy-hunt-pragmatic-programmer

If you’re able to I would encourage you to volunteer your time for this event; RJUG is looking for some help with the logistics of this meeting.

Links

[1] Website

[2] Book

[3] The Pragmatic Bookshelf

[4] Andy Hunt on Twitter

[5] RJUG

[6] CVREG on Twitter

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 8 September
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: INM United

Location Change

This meeting is being held in a new location. Parking is a little awkward so visit this image to find out where to park. You’ll want to park behind the INM building in order to get free validation. INM will provide it.

Parking Location

Meeting Abstract

The “midori” generative framework, php flavor. The framework goals are a clean api, generate redundant code, and focus on data centric problems (validation, abstraction, business objects, etc), some form of an application plugin/module system, and of course the hardest part, good documentation. The php flavor includes Boxing Types for values in php so that you can easily chain methods and maintain formatting of dates, etc.

http://github.com/michaelherndon/midori-php/tree/master

Presenter Bio

Youssef Chaker is a software developer at OpenSource Connections, where he’s been helping the OSC team take over the world one web app at a time. Youssef graduated from UVa with a Bachelors in Science in Computer Engineering in 2008 and had his first but brief introduction to Ruby writing an interpreter for a language called COOL (classroom object oriented language, developed in Berkeley). He’s also been using Ruby on Rails since joining OSC and has fallen back in love with programming since. He is also the author of the ZeepIt plugin, an easy way to integrate the Zeep Mobile API into a Rails application.

Michael Herndon is a senior developer at OpenSource Connections, specializing in bleeding edge technology, standards, development tools and software on both the web and desktop platforms. Not much else is known about him, the rest of his bio is evidently sealed in a vault, protected by killer Buddhist monks. If you don’t wish to go up against killer Buddhist monks, you could try his website: www.amptools.net