FiveRuns Blog

In this week’s Rails TakeFive, we are happy to welcome from Pune, India, Satish Talim of rubylearning.com.

FiveRuns: Welcome, Satish, and thanks for joining us to share your thoughts on Ruby on Rails. What was your first “ah-ha” moment with Ruby and/or Rails and when did you know that the framework was a good fit for you?

Satish Talim: I have been using Java since 1995 for all my software development work and my interest in Ruby was aroused after I read an article, Ruby the Rival in November 2005. I started learning Ruby myself and created my own site RubyLearning.com to help others like me to quickly get a handle on Ruby. I saw a great opportunity for local software companies in using Ruby / Rails and to help promote the language, I created the PuneRuby user group which now has over 500 members. With time, I have had the pleasure of interacting with some great Ruby / Rails minds like David Heinemeier Hansson, Bruce Tate and many more.

FiveRuns: Where do you go for Rails-related news and insight – any particular website, blogs, forums, etc. that are of particular value?

Satish Talim: I use / read:

• For most of my Ruby / Rails-related news, Peter Cooper’s popular Ruby news blog – RubyInside.
• DZone and InfoQ for additional news.
• The Ruby-Talk forum, since my focus is more on the Ruby language.
• WorkingWithRails to get to know other Ruby / Rails community members.
• Blogs of Obie Fernandez, Ola Bini, Pat Eyler amongst others.

FiveRuns: Let’s talk about Rubinius – what do you see as the major advantage here, even though we’re obviously in the early stages?

Satish Talim: Rubinius is a new implementation of Ruby done in a Smalltalk style with a small core VM written in C and almost everything else written in Ruby. At this point it’s still slow and incomplete, but it’s maturing fast. Engine Yard is investing heavily in Rubinius and this would encourage the development of tools and libraries that will benefit the rest of the community. Rubinius is going to open up core Ruby hacking to the masses, and I agree with Pat Eyler here that, it would result in more people hacking on the system and trying out new ideas. As some of these ideas prove themselves, I see them being adopted into Ruby.

FiveRuns: There was a great article recently on the Rails community in Austin and the Austin on Rails user group specifically. Are you part of a local user group? Tell us about your local community, what you love about it, how it is grown, and what challenges the group sees ahead of itself, in both the near and long term.

Satish Talim: I started the PuneRuby user group in 2005 to promote the understanding, usage and adoption of Ruby / Rails locally. With time, the user group now has over 500 members. Most of the discussions between the members is via the Yahoo user group site, though we do try and meet at least once a month. Going ahead, the group needs to involve themselves in some of the many projects on RubyForge – projects that need contributions (mostly development work) from more people. With so many members with PuneRuby, we could adopt some of the RubyForge projects.

FiveRuns: What is the best Ruby and/or Rails book that you have read recently?

Satish Talim: The most recent book I read was David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto’s The Ruby Programming Language. For experienced programmers who want to look at this language in depth, this guide is invaluable.

Satish Talim, an independent software consultant who helps US based software companies, setup base in Pune, India (his home town). Among other things, he leads the PuneRuby user group, which he founded in 2005.