Mousetrap 2.0

REST FTW, Part 4

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

For this installment, I am going to simply refer you here. This skips around a bit, relative our approach here, but (a) I haven't had time to write a new installment, (b) I'd like to give some link love to Rando, since he is also trying to help clear up the confusion on REST, (c) it is a good, practical, article, and (d) you can see some of the same thought process I went through in terms of deciphering Roy's blog.

GoRuCo Rocked

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

First, for those of you who haven’t heard, I’ve left AT&T Interactive and am now with new startup, SharesPost.com. (Launch is coming soon.) And, no, it isn’t running on Waves. At least, not yet. More on this momentarily.

Second, some thoughts on the recent GoRuCo, held at Pace University in Manhattan … to begin with, awesome. That is how you do it. I haven’t been to all the regional RubyConfs, but I’ve been to several, as well as the national conference, and many smaller non-Ruby conferences. They all tend to suffer from one common malady: too many talks and too little socializing. Furthermore, there just aren’t enough women involved. I realize this has become topical lately, but I’ve always thought the imbalance in the technical world (not just Ruby Nation) was ridiculous.

Moving On

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Okay, people. Here's the big explanation. First, the facts of the matter. I've left AT&T and started a new gig with SharesPost.com, which provides on-line trading for privately held stock, joining them as their VP of Engineering. This is pretty heady stuff, all Ruby, and all the more so because it is associated with an up-and-coming incubator, Brighthouse, and because it is located in Santa Monica, so I can move back to the bizzeach!

The Myth Of The Missing Business Model

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Over the years, there has been a lot of angst about the perceived lack of a business model with Web startups. The venture capitalists backing these startups are even accused of being a means of socialist style wealth redistribution, which would make any veteran entrepreneur laugh spastically. Still, after the Silly Season of Web 1.0 and the Endless Summer of Facebook and Twitter, I guess I can understand the doubts.

REST FTW, Part 3

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post, I suggested thinking about REST and ROA in the context of an object-based platform and protocol neutral approach to distributed computing. The "objects" are the specific representations (MP3, JSON, HTML) of a resource. The semantics of a resource itself are intentionally vague because you never interact with them directly, at least from the standpoint of ROA. This ensures that the "platform neutral" part of the bargain is never compromised.

REST FTW, Part 2

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

REST is not an architecture, but a set of constraints for an architecture. I like to use the phrase Resource-Oriented Architecture to talk about the specific Web-based architecture that satisfies those constraints. But the main thing to remember is that these are constraints for a bandwidth-optimizing object-based distributed computing architecture that is both platform and protocol neutral. In that light, one thing that should be clear is that REST therefore applies to pretty much everything Web developers do these days.

REST FTW, Part 1

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Lately, in my talks on Waves and how it supports RESTful architectures, I've found I've had to take a step back and talk more about what REST is and why it matters.

This is a bit surprising, since REST has been on the buzzword bingo card for years now. However, it turns out that most of what has passed for RESTful is really what I have come to call REST-lite. Essentially, REST-lite focused on the verbs of the HTTP protocol and (more or less) ignores ... well, the rest.

LA RubyConf Kills It

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The inaugural LA RubyConf was a bit hit. I am proud to have kicked things off as the first speaker, given the line-up that followed, which included cats and dogs living together, flying robots, cloud comedy and a unified theory of hacking.

Speaking At GoRuCo

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be speaking on Waves at GoRuCo in The Big Apple (specifically, Pace University in Lower Manhattan) on May 31st. I love Manhattan (or, at least, I love visiting there) and I really enjoy these smaller conferences.

Geek Chic: Art Meets Technology At TEDx

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It is easy to be a cynic. It is easy to say, the hell with it, and give up. But nothing really interesting ever gets done that way. And certainly part of what I love about TED — and Mindshare and other events like it — is that it celebrates perseverance. Some people don’t get that. Was it cheesy as hell when Melissa Etheridge joined Muslim rock star Salman Ahmad, singing ring the bells of change, and everone was literally ringing these little bells? Hell, yeah it was. But when you back it up with an organizational behavior case study on building the Large Hadron Collider or a talk by a guy restoring sight to the blind, well, you know what?

I’ll take the cheese all day long. Because, really, it’s a celebration.

The Ethics Of Innovation

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I grew up in Detroit, but I’ve got no love for American automakers. I think bailing them out is a waste of money. I want them to die and for Detroit to move on and find an industry who treats them better.

Why do I hate them? Because they don’t innovate.

Top 10 Reasons Resource-Oriented Architecture Matters

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

One of the emerging themes in our work at AT&T Interactive R&D is Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA). However, there is a lot of confusion about what ROA is and why it’s important. Sometimes, it’s just easier to talk to the “why it’s important” part and not worry so much about the definition. If you know what it does, then what it is becomes more of an intuition rather than an abstract concept.

Mousetrap 2.0 Relaunch

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

With the development shop at AT&T Interactive R&D (Web site coming soon) now in place (which is to say we now have nearly 30 extremely talented developers), and work on Waves, PoolParty, and Rubinius (among other things) proceeding apace, I finally have a chance to take a step back and put more energy into evangelizing our nascent vision of the future.

Introducing AT&T Interactive Labs

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

For most of last year, I was involved in two things. Launching Waves and AT&T Interactive Labs. We have gotten great support from the suits to do our thing, and our group has gone from nothing to going on 40 people in about a year. And although our initial efforts may be modest, rest assured we have much more in store. Including, of course, continued support for Waves and, more generally, resource-oriented architecture.

Introducing Functor

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I was supposed be to working on our rewrite of the request lambda mapping code in Waves. Somehow instead, I ended up with functor. It actually started because I was thinking it would be cool to have a Resource class with overloaded methods for get, put, et al.

Introducing Autocode 0.9.9

Sun, 18 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Autocode is an open source class / module loader for Ruby. We’ve just updated it with some bug fixes and initialization hooks.

module_eval Versus instance_eval

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, doing some work on autocode (a new version of which is imminent), as well as some cool new features for Waves (more on this soon on the Waves blog), we found ourselves trying to grok the difference between module_eval and instance_eval. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of definitive information available on the ‘net, I thought I’d take a stab at it here.

Threading In Ruby

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Threads were cool for awhile, but now they’re evil. In the Ruby community, some of the cool kids are really serious about thread support and some of them aren’t. At the same time, Ruby itself is in a major transition when it comes to threading, which just adds to the confusion.

Functors In JavaScript

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Facets Versus Extensions Versus …

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

One of the great things about Ruby is that it’s so easy to extend the core libraries. Just re-open a class and start defining methods! In fact, it’s so easy, that it’s led to at least two gems whose sole purpose is to collect useful extensions.

Introducing Waves

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Waves is an open-source Ruby framework for building Web apps. It was inspired by Rails and Camping, but goes beyond either in terms of features. I hope you'll check it out.

Introducing Autocode

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Autocode is an open source Ruby library that allows you to mixin automatic code loading, reloading, and even “magic” classes and modules into any module you like, just like the framework folks do.

Introducing DateJS

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

DateJS is a new JavaScript library for parsing, processing, and formatting dates that substantially augments the native Date support in JavaScript. You can find a nice overview, source code, and test cases at the DateJS Google Code site. We are actively seeking feedback and contributers: we hope you’ll participate in the discussion forums.

Site And Blog Re-Org

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

We are moving our open source projects to Google Code, ~~the Web site and blog to WordPress~~, and preparing for the release of and / or updates to several major open source initiatives. Expect an initial announcement later this week on the first of these projects.

Top 10 Reasons To Avoid JavaScript Component Libraries

Fri, 18 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

An interesting commentary over at Ajaxian concerning the proliferation of component libraries (YUI, TIBCO, etc.)

Ruby Meta-Programming Gotchas

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of the neat features of Ruby is its support for meta-programming. That is code that, essentially, writes code. However, like any powerful feature, there are some dangers that go along with using these techniques.

Functors In JavaScript

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Merging functional and object-oriented semantics can be tricky. Take, for example, currying a function, a staple of functional programming. Let’s take an example of add on a ShoppingCart object. If I curry add, do I curry it with a ShoppingCart instance, or a Product? Technically, this is first parameter, albeit implicit, so we can argue this either way.