I switched to command line mode to explain something and mentioned how cool it was that I am using vim key bindings to edit the command line text. I simply press Esc to start moving around using b or w , then I can use “cow” to edit a current word on the command line etc..

Someone mentioned that was the one thing that made the talk worthy coming to for him.

To make this happen, I was using a .zshrc file from astrails.

but the magic is very simple to accomplish. by default you probably have emacs style key bindings in your command line. but if your’e a vim fan (as were the astrails guys I interned with for 6 months) you can change your .zshrc file to add this little line:

bindkey -v

if you’re in bash instead of zsh you can use

set -o vi

that’s it. next time you load a command shell you can Esc away and use vim key bindings.

Here’s the gist for my custom theme that has lots of information (current branch, time since last commit, what change types and more).

In ruby underground, every meeting, several people who are startup owners stand up and say that they are looking for ruby devs. Every time the number is bigger and bigger. And there are not enough ruby devs to go around.

Just today I noticed an email on the IsraelRb mailing list, where a company is looking for ruby devs, and wrote this:

p.s if you will help to fill-in this position by introducing us
someone you know – we will give you a shiny new iPhone4S

If you live in Israel, it’s time to learn ruby, my friends. Coming from .NET you can expect to make pretty much the same or more than you are making right now. if you are coming with little or no experience you can get up to speed – many companies are looking for interns as well. Get paid less the first year, then get paid like a pro they year after.

Israel *is* a startup nation, but it is just now clearing the fog that Microsoft has swamped us all with, and seeing that sometimes, the right tool for the right job, is not in your current ecosystem.

Two major differences from the MS world though:

• The ‘guided’ way creates code that is readable and maintainable, assuming you have tests (I’m not create about the maintainability of the tests just yet)
• Fighting the framework is also pretty easy if you do get there – ruby is a language with much less restrictions than C#. but many times I’ve found that I am fighting the framework when there is a perfectly good ‘other’ way of doing what I need.

as a side note, it is pretty awesome to discover everyday little things that really made me smile happily when I was shown them. One of the last onces that happened was when, after a week of working on features with javascript, and working with creating html element ids such as “form_user_151″ so I can find them later in ajax, my team lead showed me, during code review, that I could have just used the dom_id(object) in question, and more specifically, dom_id(theobject, :the_prefix). so to create an html id of form_customer_151 I’d just write dom_id(@customer, :form)

in haml it is even cooler: to cerate an html element like that in haml all I have to do is wrap the object in [] like this:

#[@customer,:form]

which is short for dom_id(@customer, :form)

what’s cool is that there is perfect sync (synergy..!) between how you create the html, and how you navigate it from javascript, without needing to concatenate strings together too often. The power of OSS made sure that something that everyone keeps doing all the time, becuase easier and easier over time.

That feature really made me happy. I remember looking awe-struck for 15 seconds when he showed me that. Isn’t that a great feeling?

PS

Why did it take me 6 months to gain some ‘flow’ ? I took on myself to learn many things at once:

• Linux/mac OS
• git
• vim
• web development (I was a desktop programmer with winforms and a little WPF. I tried web on MVC – did NOT take to it)
• ruby
• rails

I knew jQuery from before, but I’m still learning how to do it *well* today.

THings I don’t really know yet, or know very little of:

• deployment (other than a little heroku)
• performance/caching
• non relational DBs
• how to create your own gem
• rails inside out (and plugins)
• sintatra & alternatives
• backbone.js
• 960 grids and other layout frameworks
• I’m probably missing other things. I still don’t know everything I don’t know..! tell me what I missed.

here is a simple rule checklist for my commit behavior:

• Commit one ‘feature’ or logical change at a time. if you use the word ‘and’ you might need to split commits.
• Commit changes to whitespaces and lines cleanup in a separate commit (or it blurs up reading commit diffs.
• before commiting – do git status (to see what changed), and git diff (or git dw.. try it!) to see if you haven’t left any debugger messages or other debugging things in code.
• only add files per logical change
• then do commit (after all tests are passing)

here is a non comprehensive list of podcasts, mp3 and video series for ruby and rails folks. Please add more in the comments if I missed anything.

• Ruby5 – a 5 minute show each time, with pretty helpful talk from the presenters. As a newbie, I like the fact that they sometimes remember that not everyone knows some of the frameworks they are talking about, so they take a sentence or two to explain the idea behind many of the gems and tools they mention. overall, it’s way too short to be helpful to get the “feel” of the community, but it’s good to be “in the know”. I think of it as the short curst cnn of ruby news.
• The ruby show – The ruby show has the promise of a great ruby related podcast. It has two presenters who like talking about this stuff, it has a multitude of issues to discuss, and it even has what was supposed to be the british clone of Jon Oliver from the daily show.These guys are really trying, and they are doing a great service to the community…..but….while I subscribe to it, it bugs the hell out of me as a newbie to the scene :
• They drop names of gems, frameworks and servers like rain drops in the middle of a storm, and they never, ever explain what those gems are or the idea behind them, not even for a sentence. It is the most annoying thing to hear “a new version of smula_buster gem is out, and let’s hope that the performance is better this time. – “yes, that’s what she said!”
• They are not as funny as they think   – “that’s what she said” and the like – I usually have no problem with that, but I expect more from a Jon Oliver lookalike, sorry, and to rpeat that 15 times a show, at some point, it’s just more about bad timing than anything else, really.
• Too many “inside baseball” jokes about rails not scaling (I never found out if rails does scale or not), python programmers, and windows programmers.Oh, and not to forget – ” a version was just released 2 minutes after we released this podcast” never ending joke.
• The never ending hinting about not being paid by companies you happen to be mentioning on the show.
• all this makes the show feel like a bit of an arrogant “call me in 3 years and let’s talk” podcast, instead of something newbies can learn from. I’m not looking for spoonfeeding, but during a car drive, you can’t write down 15 gem names that flash by to check them out later, and retracing that audio location later is just a big drag. you’ll get more sponsors when you attract more listeners, and there are a LOT of newbies like me out there, who I think would have loved to tell you this, guys.
• ADDCasts – recently discovered, this video podcast seems kind of nice, but I don’t have enough experience with it so far to form an opinion.
• Ruby Rouges – recently discovered, this video podcast seems kind of nice, but I don’t have enough experience with it so far to form an opinion. I’ve been recommended to listen to the debugging in ruby episode, and I will.
• Teach me to code – haven’t tried it yet
• RailsCasts is a very very helpful set of videos about lots and lots of things in the rails world!

Want to start with Ruby and Rails and have no idea where to even begin?

Check out RailsInstaller.org – it contains pretty much everything you need to get started, in a way that is very easy and painless.

The video on that site will tell you everything you need to know to get started on your “hello world” website, including using git, pushing to github and generating rails related views.