Learn about modules in Ruby, what, why and when to use different ways of using modules.

In Ruby (like in Smalltalk), one of the killer features are blocks. This talk looks in depth at what Ruby blocks are and how they are used to show what they afford a programmer that most other languages don't. Blocks turn out to be a general purpose approach to creating clear, clean, versatile and often elegantly encapsulated interfaces.

Rails 2.0 step by step.

• Part 2 is here

I think one of the more interesting conversations that’s going to occur in the Ruby community once 1.9 is released is how we integrate the syntax (and behavioral) changes coming into the language in as elegant form as possible. Over time, the consensus (or at least conventional usage) will drive what we label Rubyesque (that is, idiomatically Ruby); what is accepted, what is absurd, what is clean, what is over-engineered, and what is far more clever than it is smart. We’ll be reforming the feel and taste of Ruby using new artistic tools.

Seriously, I think I have something against Rails’ lib directory. We jumped from keeping gems in lib to vendor/gems back in March. Then we jumped from keeping generic Rake tasks in lib/tasks to Sake. Now we’re gonna jump again.

Recently – for various degrees of recent that is – people really seem to be into programming language design and development.

Recently – for various degrees of recent that is – people really seem to be into programming language design and development.