The last 5 weeks, a team consisting of me, Alexey Verkhovsky, Matt Wastrodowski and Toby Tripp from ThoughtWorks, and Rich Manalang from Oracle have created a new application based on an internal Oracle application. This site is called Oracle Mix, and is aimed to be the way Oracles customers communicate with Oracle and each other, suggesting ideas, answering each others questions and generally networking.

Why is this a huge deal? Well, for me personally it’s really kinda cool... It’s the first public JRuby on Rails site in existance. It’s deployed on the “red stack”: Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Database, Oracle SSO, Oracle Internet Directory. And JRuby on Rails.

It’s cool. Go check it out: http://mix.oracle.com.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: jruby, jruby on rails, mix, oracle, thoughtworks. | #

Chad Wathington recently posted on the official ThoughtWorks Studios blog a post called Many Facets of Ruby. I would like to expand on some of the points on it, and how I see it. To be sure, what is posted on the TW Studios blog is the “official” ThoughtWorks views – whereas what I write in this blog is purely my own opinions, with no relationship to ThoughtWorks at all.

The point Chad writes about is that ThoughtWorks lately have been talking a lot about JRuby, in such a way that it’s easy to get the impression that we as a company have chosen one implementation over the others. As Chad writes, that’s not correct.

I’ve probably done the same thing in my blog. Obviously, I really like JRuby and hope it will work out well. I really like Rubinius effort and I predicted a while back that Rubinius may take over after MRI as the standard C Ruby implementation. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in the the other approaches around. MRI and YARV definitely has strong points going for them (MRI and JRuby are still the only fully working implementations of Ruby). But when IronRuby, XRuby, Rubinius, YARV, Garden Points and Cardinal is more complete, the Ruby environment will be that much richer for it.

I’m not in this game for a specific implementation. I would use Ruby no matter if there was a JRuby or not. It’s just that JRuby solves some of my problems, and allows me to hack on something that I know a segment of the Ruby user group will find useful. I’m in this for the language. I have chosen Ruby as my language, but the language is the same over the implementations. And it’s going to be really exciting in the Ruby space the next few months.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: ruby, thoughtworks. | #

I am finally back from a week of travel. Funny, it feels like much more than a week – but I guess that’s because there were some interesting mishaps with some of the flights.

Last Sunday I traveled to Berlin to attend RailsConf Europe. I arrived kind of late and was really tired and out of it during the Monday. I didn’t find most of the tutorials going on that enlightening – though it was fun to see David, Aslak and Dan present on RSpec together. I liked the mind map format they used instead of regular slides. Due to general tiredness and a really bad migraine I went to bed early. But before that I managed to see Dave Thomas introductionary keynote. It was interesting and extremely well presented; the theme was art and how it can help you as a programmer to use this metaphor to understand the things we do more closely. I didn’t find anything really new in the presentation and I’ve heard several people say that they would prefer if Dave had spent some time talking specifically about Rails instead. I tend to agree.

The second day of the conference was really good. DHH delivered a keynote that basically said that there is nothing really new happening with Rails. After that it was time for sessions. I guess none of the first presentations made any real impact on me, since I don’t remember what they were. After lunch I saw Nic Williams talk on meta programming; the talk was really fun. I didn’t learn anything new, but I had a fun time while doing it.

Charles and Tom did their JRuby presentation. And I also saw Evan Phoenix Rubinius talk. It was very interesting – if I could stand programming in such a low level language as C, I would probably spend more time helping them than I do now. I will write more about Rubinius – probably tomorrow – I haven’t really said everything I need to say here.

After the sessions there were more keynotes. Roy Fielding talked about REST. I gotta admit I didn’t really hear much of it though, since I was spending time fixing an annoying bug. After that Craig McClanahan talked for a few minutes about Rails. It was very enlightening to know how well regarded Rails is within Sun. Some people seems to have a different view on all this though, seeing conspiracy and dirty dealings in the way Sun is working Rails. I’ll need to cover that in a separate blog post too.

ThoughtWorks threw a party after the days session. That was very fun and well attended.

All the JRuby team attending (Charles, Nick, Tom and me) gathered together on the evening and did a JRuby Q&A BOF. Lots of people there, and a very free form of presentation made this one of the highlights for me. I had great fun and I hope the audience did too.

Finally the Wednesday… Cyndi Mithell from ThoughtWorks did a very nice keynote about why Ruby and Rails may be ready to cross the chasm and get a strong hold in the enterprise.

Koz and Marcel did a very good Rails Best Practices session. Down to earth, simple, totally useful advice on things to avoid in a Rails application and what to do instead.

And then it was time for my presentation about JRuby in ThoughtWorks. I think it went very well, but it became a little bit too corporate for my taste. I’ll need to make sure that doesn’t happen the next time. Maybe some more code in the presentation? =)

Most of the rest of the day was spent networking, hanging out in the exhibit hall and stuff like that. And then RailsConf was over.

My flight to Sweden from Berlin that evening didn’t really happen as I had expected it too. Instead I had to spend the night on a hotel in Frankfurt and take an early flight from there to Gothenburg.

Overall I had a very good time at RailsConf this year. It’s a worlds difference from RailsConf last year in London, which I felt was a real waste. This year the energy was high, much interesting things going on and lots of nice and smart people. Not as good as RailsConf in Portland earlier this year, but still very well worth attending. It seems that RailsConf has found a good balance in sessions. The only thing I can wish for would be more interesting choices for the tutorial day.

2 Comments | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: jruby, railsconf, railsconfeu, rubinius, thoughtworks. | #

I’ve just come back from Bangalore, India where I spent two weeks with intense learning, much socializing and incredible amounts of fun. In short, I’ve attended ThoughtWorks Immersion. I found it to be a singular experience, and something that will be immensely helpful during my career at ThoughtWorks.

So what is Immersion? Basically, it’s two weeks of learning that all ThoughtWorkers go through. The aim is not really to teach technical concepts or specific ways of working, but more to establish a common vocabulary, get everyone to understand the history of ThoughtWorks, and also give insight into all parts of the organization. How everything works and how we do things. A large part also is about what makes ThoughtWorks different from other companies, both in the way we do things but also the why of it all. The values TWers should share and what makes TW a unique place to work.

I feel I’ve learned incredibly much. The two weeks away from regular work was hard but definitely worth it. I wish all companies had something like this – but I guess that this is one of the ways that make TW a very different place.

The learning side was important, but the social aspect probably even more so. I now have 13 new friends within ThoughtWorks, spread all over the world. We had a good time together. Also, Bill Kimmel and Naresh Jain turned out to be outstanding teachers and very nice people to boot.

Of course, the stay in Bangalore got even more productive when Roy Singham, Chad Wathington, Cyndi Mitchell and a few other people arrived there. I spent some time with them, planning and scheming.

Meeting Håkan Råberg and seeing the cool stuff he’s working on (still secret) was also very nice.

All in all, two weeks well spent.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: bangalore, immersion, thoughtworks. | #

I am at OSCON with Roy Singham, the founder of ThoughtWorks. We’re here as sponsors. If you are here too – Roy likes nothing more than an argument about anything related to a) the merits of various languages, b) Agile versus waterfall, c) the best cell-phone. Seriously, if there is something interested that should be big for custom-app dev in the enterprise, tell Roy or the other ten ThoughtWorkers here about it and we’ll help make it happen. Come by our booth at the left side of the expo hall if you want to find us.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: oscon, thoughtworks. | #

I had a very good time at FOSCON III with the Portland Ruby Brigade yesterday. There were lots of entertaining talks too. I would say that my “lightning talk” wasn’t really a lightning talk at all. Unless you count the speed of my talking… I managed to race through all my 22 slides – all of them shock full with information – in the time alloted to me. Hopefully people learned something from it.

Chad Wathington demonstrated Mingle which also was very nice.

John Lam showed us a taste of IronRuby, and also talked some about the implementation particulars that made certain things faster in IronRuby than on MRI. Interesting stuff, but I’m looking forward to the full talk tomorrow.

Alan McKean from GemStone showcased GemStone/JRuby – still a work in progress though. For those of you who don’t know what GemStone is, think extremely powerful object persistence. And they’re building a new version for Ruby, on top of JRuby. Very cool.

I realized that there are a few points about JRuby that haven’t been emphasized enough, though, so here is there executive summary bullet points:

• JRuby is totally Java compliant and runs on any Java.
• JRuby is 1.0
• JRuby supports Rails
• ThoughtWorks offers commercial support for JRuby
• JRuby performance is on par with the C implementation, on average.

No Comments | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: foscon, gemstone, jruby, ruby, thoughtworks. | #

Yesterday I spent 2 hours chatting with Fabio Akita, of AkitaOnRails (the largest Rails blog in Brazil); the result is a long interview that was published today. It’s got some good stuff, and some Ola-stuff, which you should recognize by now.

And I note that he calls me a workaholic; but he got this interview prepared in less than a day too, and also translated it into Portuguese.

You can find it at http://www.akitaonrails.com/pages/olabini.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: interview, jruby, thoughtworks. | #

I’ve finally started. I’ve finally moved to London. I’ve been working for two weeks at ThoughtWorks now, and it’s been quite crazy. Everything is very nice and I’m having loads of fun. Of course, it’s also lots of hard work, and I feel that I’m stretching my capacity considerably more than I ever did at Karolinska Institutet. That’s great, and I feel that I’m really doing something real now. We have so many interesting things going on, and I wish I could tell you all about it.

What I can tell you is that I’m working quite much on Mingle, and I’m also spending time on other JRuby related issues. I’ve been planning on getting SQL Server and Oracle working as good as possible with AR-JDBC, and I’ve spent time on Derby performance. Hopefully I’ll continue the database work this week, since especially SQL Server and Oracle is very important.

The most important work for this week is probably to prepare for TheServerSide in Barcelona. I still haven’t had time to prepare my demos, so it’s about time now. I hope to see many of you there.

In conclusion, my first weeks at ThoughtWorks have been awesome. I really like the pople, and everything is just neat. I like being able to walk to work and working in the very nice TW office on High Holborn. I’m very happy about it all.

1 Comment | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: jruby, thoughtworks. | #

Yesterday I landed in London, and let me tell you: it’s been tough getting here. Packing and moving and arranging all takes lots of time and energy. And it’s not helping being sick while pulling it off, either. But I’m finally here, and right now sitting at a hotel room in Holborn, close to Russel Square. Hopefully I’ll be able to land an apartment soon too, and then I’ll get back to my former speed, hopefully.

In the meantime, tomorrow is my first day at ThoughtWorks. It’s bound to be interesting, but I don’t expect any downtime. We have so many interesting things going, that it will be full speed ahead from day one.

Although I’m more tired than I should be, if someone feels like meeting up this or next week for a beer and talk JRuby, it would be fun.

4 Comments | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: london, thoughtworks. | #

As you know, I will be starting at ThoughtWorks Studios in June, and I’ve been to JavaOne and now RailsConf, head on head. There is something I really need to tell you right now, and something that I’ve felt very strongly this week and last week. As I said, I’ll start at TW in two weeks. My interview process was basically like any interview process; I met lots of TW people, but I couldn’t relate to them that much, because being part of the interview process made it very hard. My mind was focused on other things.

Martin Fowler said in one of his bliki entries (here), that people matter most, and: “I decided then that I wouldn’t work with unpleasant people, however capable they might be.”. And he then goes on and says that this was one of many reasons he actually joined TW. TW has a “no assholes” policy. I didn’t actually get the reality of this (I mean seriously, would you believe that such a thing actually could be?), until RailsConf when I met something like 30-40 TWkers. I’ve spent much time with Roy, Chad Wathington, Cyndi Mitchell, Julian Boot, Alexey Verkhovsky, Desi McAdam and so many other people that I can’t remember their names. But what I do remember is that I felt right at home with them; these are people I can relate to, I can discuss with them, I can agree or disagree with them but regardless I will have a good time. It feels very much like a family, and I feel so much at home going to TW. I think that this is the best thing that could ever happen me. I have no illusions about this; I know for a fact that most of these people are smarter in every way than me. That is totally fine, that means I can learn great things from them.

So, what I wanted to say is just that I feel great about this. I’m so excited, and it’s going to be a great time; not only for me and TW, but for the Ruby and JRuby community.

Well, I just wanted all the TWkers I’ve met these days to know that I feel so great about this. I’ve never felt as welcome, and I’ve never found a place with such great people. ThoughtWorks is a radically different company, and it’s the people who does that. ThoughtWorks is extremely different, in a very good way.

I will need to blog about the last day of RailsConf, and more overall feelings and stuff like that, but I’ll do that when I get back to Sweden.

2 Comments | By Ola Bini | In: Uncategorized | tags: thoughtworks. | #