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Ruby On Rails Learning and Training Content

Posted: May 31st, 2007, 5:58am CEST by computer_teacher

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Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework designed to make the job of the developer easier by providing everything one needs to create web-based, database-driven applications easily while focusing on the idea, not the technology behind implementing the idea. It is designed to be a marriage of the “quick-n-dirty” camp of PHP web developers and the “slow-n-clean” methodologies of the old enterprise architecture crowd. Ruby on Rails succeeds by automating the creation of the most common types of Web applications while not straightjacketing you if you want to add custom or atypical requirements. Moreover, compared to many Free Software libraries that perform individual aspects of a Web application, Rails contains a nicely integrated set of tools for all aspects.

Ruby on Rails is taking Web development by storm. Let's start with a refresher on the underlying technologies:

Ruby is the free, simple, straightforward, extensible, portable, interpreted scripting language for quick-and-easy object-oriented programming that, like Perl, sports many features to process text files and perform system-management tasks.
Rails is a full-stack, open source Web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications with more ease and less code.

Being a full-stack framework means that all layers in Rails are built to work together so you don't repeat yourself and can use a single language from top to bottom. Within Rails, everything (templates to control flow to business logic) is written in Ruby. Rails favors reflection and runtime extensions over configuration files and annotations.
Download the open source Ruby on Rails Web framework.

Download Ruby from the ruby-lang.org project Web site.

Here are some of the best free Ruby On Rails Learning and Training Content that I have recently found.

Ruby On Rails (24 pages, 922kb, pdf format)
The main goal of the document is to give you an overview of Ruby On Rails, specifically, what it is, what is does, and where it is being used. You will see if Rails is feasible for your needs and will learn about resources where you can obtain more information about learning Rails.

Jim Weirich's Ruby On Rails Presentation
[.mov, 50.4MB] This was given at the January 2006 Cincinnati (Ohio, USA) eXtreme Programmers Group, XP Cincinatti. (archived)

Ruby On Rails Screencasts and Conference Presentations
These Screencasts offer a view at the fundamentals of getting started with a Rails application, and how they work. The presentations are slides and a movie.

An Introduction to Ruby On Rails (A 13 slide presentation in pdf format.)

An Introduction to Ruby On Rails (44 slides, 944kb, pdf format)

Ruby On Rails slides (48 slides, 553b, pdf format)

4 Chapters from Build Your Own Ruby On Rails Web Applications (163 pages, 3.95mb, pdf format)

Installing Ruby On Rails on Linux (7 pages, 711kb, pdf format)

A Ruby On Rails Cheatsheet (1 page, 105kb, pdf format)

Another Ruby On Rails Cheatsheet (1 page, 186kb, pdf format)

Ruby On Rails Reference (37 pages, 492kb, pdf format)
This is a "short" Ruby on Rails reference. It's goal is to give you an overview over the most used functions, methods, and classes. It is not intended as a tutorial, but as a reference guide for those already familiar with this technology.

Ruby on Rails 1.16 - Edge Reference (25 pages, 77kb, pdf format)

A Quick Introduction to Rails
This Rails presentation is designed for a firefox browser.

Ruby On Rails Videos at Blinkbits
These videos include the following:
- About Ruby on Rails Components (video/quicktime)
- Seeing Is Believing - updated_rails_tutorial.mov
- Ruby on Rails - Why not
- AJAX in Ruby on Rails tutorial
- Ruby on Rails demo
- rails_setup.mov
- tim bray - ruby on rails podcast
- Screencast InstantRails

10 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby, By Jim Weirich

Software Architecture Case Study: Ruby on Rails (24 pages, 385kb, pdf format)
A high-level view of the Rails architecture makes it look very much like other web application frameworks. Its architecture is based on MVC, designed to separate concerns and reduce the coupling between disparate functionality. Part of Rails’ power comes from the fact that this architecture is connected through an auto-generated code base structure. The developer can set up a project and then make changes to the model directly and observe the results without a lot of work to set up every part of getting that data propagated throughout the rest of the system.

The entire benefit of using Ruby on Rails is in many of the small things it does to benefit the developer in ways that other similar frameworks do not. These little things collectively work together to create a development experience which overall seems much more agile and less cumbersome than the process involved in working with other large and robust web development architectures.

The Many Facets of RubyGems

Using Ruby - An Introduction to Ruby for Java Programmers

An Invitation to Ruby
This presentation is an invitation to check Ruby out.

Technorati Tags: ruby on rails tutorials, ruby on rails training, ruby on rails videos, ruby on rails, rails, ruby

Free and Open Source Online Books

Posted: May 31st, 2007, 2:17am CEST by computer_teacher

Technorati Tags: free computer books, open source books, programming books, linux books, online books, online computer books

Web Design and Development Tutorials

Posted: May 29th, 2007, 10:36pm CEST by computer_teacher

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Here are Training Tutorials and Techniques, with sample code, teaching Web Design and Development. These tutorials are for an introductory Web Page Design Course at Saint Vincent College. The modules and tutorials here cover HTML and web programming techniques. HTML tags are taught via tutorials and explanations. Chapter 10 covers Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and how these are used to facilitate web page and web site design with consistency across a whole site. Later training chapters discuss techniques that can be used to make web pages more interactive, including coding examples using JavaScript, HTML forms, CGI Scripts, VBScripts, Active Server Pages, and Java Applets. The reference page at the end provides web resources for further in-depth information on web development.

Table of Contents:

Technorati Tags: web design, web development, web programming, web design tutorials, web design training

Free training for ASP .NET with VB .NET

Posted: May 29th, 2007, 8:50pm CEST by computer_teacher

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If you are seeking to learn how to use ASP .NET to create web applications, then this training from St. Vincent College will interest you. This free training for developing ASP .NET Web Applications with VB .NET shows you how to code using ASP .NET to create web applications, and specifically, those types of applications that work as a front-end to a database. Visual Basic .NET 2003 is used as the programming language. The coding examples given assume that you are familiar with introductory programming. The coding examples that connect to and modify the database assume that you already know basic database concepts, such as what tables and queries are. The database examples use SQL Server but a background in Access, Oracle, or similar should be sufficient.

Table of Contents:

Introductory Examples

Web Apps that are Front-ends to a Database

A Web App that Gets Data from a Database
A Database/Web App with User Input
Maintaining Session State Information
Using Cookies
A DataReader Example
Online Survey
Includes login/logout and inserting of data into a table.

E-commerce Web Apps

Simple E-commerce App 1
User selects a product from a drop-down list.
Simple E-commerce App 2
Add search functionality, with results shown in a data list.
Simple E-commerce App 3
Results of search shown in a data grid with paging.
Simple E-commerce App 4
Small changes to the previous app.
Larger E-commerce App 1
Groups products by category)
Larger E-commerce App 2
Adds product attributes, shopping cart, checkout process.
Larger E-commerce App 3
Uses a web service, suggests other additions and improvements.

Further Information

Technorati Tags: asp.net training, aspdotnet tutorials, vb.net training, vbdotnet tutorials, visual basic .net, asp .net

People and Methodologies in Software Development

Posted: May 23rd, 2007, 5:22pm CEST by computer_teacher

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This is a well written doctorate thesis, by Alistair Cockburn, about software development methodology and how people on the development project work with a methodology. Reading this will help you understand how to manage application development projects better and understand better how to work with people on a project. Here is a mirror of this thesis.

People and Methodologies in Software Development

Submitted as partial fulfillment of the degree Doctor Philosophiae
At the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway
February 25, 2003

Abstract
This thesis reports on research performed over a ten-year period, interviewing project teams, participating directly on projects, and reviewing proposals and case studies. The research addressed three questions relating to people and software development methodologies (Q1 through Q3), and produced six results (R1 through R6).

Questions:
1) Do we need yet another software development methodology, or can we expect a convergence and reduction at some point in time?
2) If convergence, what must be the characteristics of the converged methodology? If no convergence, how can project teams deal with the growing number of methodologies?
3) How does the methodology relate to the people on the project?

Results:
1) A methodology is a formula describing conventions of interaction between roles.
2) People's characteristics, which vary from person to person and even from moment to moment, form a first-order driver of the team's behavior and results. Such issues as how well they get along with each other and the fit (or misfit) of their personal characteristics with their job roles create significant, project-specific constraints on the methodology. This result indicates that people's personal characteristics place a limit on the effect of methodologies in general.
3) Every project needs a slightly different methodology, based on those people characteristics, the project's specific priorities, and the technologies being used. This result indicates that a team's methodology should be personalized to the team during the project and may even change during the project.
4) A set of principles were found that can be used to shape an effective methodology to the above constraints. These principles deal with the amount of coordination and verification required in the project, the trade-off between rework and serialization of work, and the trade-off between tacit and externalized knowledge in use by the team.
5) A technique was found to create a situationally specific methodology during the project and in time to serve the project, and to evolve it as the project progresses.
6) All the above suggests a repeating cycle of behavior to use on projects.
1) The members establish conventions for their interactions — a base methodology — at the start of the project. This can be likened to them "programming" themselves.
2) They then perform their jobs in the normal scurry of project life, often getting too caught up to reflect on how they are doing.
3) They schedule regular periods of reflection in which they reconsider and adjust their working conventions.
These results have been used successfully on several industrial projects having the usual time and cost pressures on the staff.

Table of Contents:

1. The Research Topic

1.1 Clarification of Words
1.2 Background to Question 1
1.3 Background to Question 2
1.4 Background to Question 3
1.5 Placing This Work in Context
1.6 Personal Motivation and Direction

2. The Research Approach

2.1 The Research Practice
2.2 The Research Theory

3. Issues and Results Chronologically

3.1 The Impact of Object-Orientation on Application Development
3.2 Selecting a Project's Methodology
3.3 The Interaction of Social Issues and Software Architecture
3.4 Characterizing People as First-Order, Non-Linear Components in Software Development
3.5 Project Winifred Case Study
3.6 Just-in-Time Methodology Construction
3.7 Balancing Lightness with Sufficiency

4. Consolidation ed Results and Reflection

4.1 Answering the Questions
4.2 Consolidation and Reliability of Results
4.3 Relating to Mathiassen's Reflective Systems Development
4.4 Reflection: The Limits of People-Plus-Methodologies

Technorati Tags: software development, software development methodology, application development methodology

Bulgaria Online Books Archive

Posted: May 23rd, 2007, 3:15pm CEST by computer_teacher

Technorati Tags: online computer books, computer books, programming books, free computer books, free programming books

Free Training for Visual Basic .Net

Posted: May 21st, 2007, 6:28pm CEST by computer_teacher

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Here are two free training resources for Visual Basic .Net. The first one linked and described below is for those with no previous Visual Basic programming experience, and for that matter, no programming knowledge is needed at all. The second one below is for those who already have used and programmed in Visual Basic 6 and need to transition to VB .Net.

This is a set of Visual Basic .Net Projects for the classroom. Teacher notes are available for each VB .Net project, along with student programming assignments. The objective of this VB.Net project book is as a first programming course using Visual Basic .Net. It assumes no previous programming knowledge on the part of the student. (pdf format, 364kb, 81 pages)

VB .Net Programs Presented and Reviewed:

Wingdings
Thermometer
Dice Display
Guessing Game
Flip Book
Simple House Drawing
Spaceship Invaders
Tic Tac Toe
Picture Display
Multiple Choice Grading
Check Book Balancing
Drawing Program
Roman Numeral Conversion
Palindromes
Conway’s Game of Life
Checkers Game

A Programmer’s Introduction to Visual Basic.NET is structured to help you learn and apply the changes from Visual Basic to Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET). Most of this ebook assumes that you are comfortable with Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6). It discusses and explains the major differences between VB6 and VB.NET. The Common Language Specification is included in the appendix. (pdf format, 4.2mb, 223 pages)

Table of Contents:

1 Why Should You Move to Visual Basic.NET?
2 Your First VB.NET Application
3 Major VB.NET Changes
4 Building Classes and Assemblies with VB.NET
5 Inheritance with VB.NET
6 Database Access with VB.NET and ADO.NET
7 Building Web Applications with VB.NET and ASP.NET
8 Building Web Services with VB.NET
9 Building Windows Services with VB.NET
10 Upgrading VB6 Projects to VB.NET

Technorati Tags: visual basic dotnet training, visual basic .net training, vb .net training, vb .net tutorials, vb .net

Python Data Structures and Algorithms Book

Posted: May 21st, 2007, 3:15pm CEST by computer_teacher

Technorati Tags: python programming, python book, free python book, python data structures, python algorithms

Free Book: Software Design Using C++

Posted: May 16th, 2007, 10:47pm CEST by computer_teacher

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Here is a Free Online Programming Book, named Software Design Using C++, made available by the Computer and Information Science Department of St. Vincent College. This online C++ programming book covers the learning materials for three complete computer science courses. Many C++ topics are covered, including intermediate and advanced topics.

The C++ code examples were tested with Microsoft's Visual C++ 6.0 compiler, and also (in most cases) with both the Visual C++ .NET 2003 compiler and the g++ compiler under Linux. Most should also work with Visual C++ .NET 2005 as well as other compilers. Some of the C++ code examples need to be run in the .NET environment.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Philosophy
Introductory Topics
1. Simple C++ Programs
2. Using the Compiler and Debugger
3. Simple C++ Functions - No parameters or return values.
4. Decisions, Decisions: Making Choices in C++
5. Complex C++ Functions - With parameters and/or return values.
6. Repetition in C++ - Loops
7. A Matter of Style: The Art of Programming
8. Programming Patterns
9. Arithmetic and Formatting of Output in C++
10. Basics of Arrays
11. Using Objects
12. Introduction to Windows Forms Applications
13. Basics of Data Streams
14. Simple Graphics
15. Useful Tables: Precedence Chart, Data Types, and Library Functions
16. Review of Introductory Topics
Intermediate Topics
1. You can review the previous section to see if you are ready for this intermediate section.
2. Software Engineering
3. Functions and Parameters
4. Arrays
5. Records (Structures)
6. Files
7. Web Search I (Simple Web Search in Linux)
8. Objects and Classes
9. More Complex Object-Oriented Features
10. Recursion (Including recursive sorting algorithms)
11. Pointers
12. Linked Lists
13. Stacks
14. Queues
15. Intermediate Windows Forms Applications
Advanced Topics
Further Information
Search CIS Dept Web Pages can be used to search for specific C++ programming items.

Technorati Tags: c++ book, free c++ book, c++ programming book, free c++ programming book, free programming book

Free Java Lectures - Two Semesters of Java

Posted: May 15th, 2007, 4:21pm CEST by computer_teacher

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For several years Tom Hunter has taught Java at various Universities around the US. Because students were constantly asking him for his Java lectures he has now created a free web site that contains his detailed Java programming and development lectures to support those courses.

Java III Lecture 2 [Basic AJAX]

» Polymorphism Lecture 1

» Variables, Methods and Objects Lecture 2

» What is a primitive What is an object

» Thread Examples

» How To Implement Log4J

» Why It's Worth It to Develop With MyEclipse

Technorati Tags: java programming lectures, java programming tutorials, java lectures, java tutorials

Top 6 Programming Diggs in last 30 days

Posted: May 15th, 2007, 4:20pm CEST by computer_teacher

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Here are what I judge to be the Top 6 Digg Programming posts in last 30 days, for providing free training content and tutorials covering web application development.

The Standards Way to Do Dynamic Data
Somewhere in between presenting static information graphics and complex, interactive data dashboards there's a need for a way to visualize moderately dynamic data on the web. Oftentimes the solutions you see implemented are clunky, for example, manually creating multiple frames of various data points and uploading them by hand. More…

Top 5 Javascript Frameworks
A list of the top 5 javascript frameworks and features. More…

The Javascript Programming Language
"Excellent presentation and great insight on the history and basics. Douglas rocks, yahoo is real lucky to have him!" More…

Learn to Ruby: 74 Quality RoR Resources and Tutorials
As is the case with every language, learning Ruby on Rails from scratch can be quite a pain. We've compiled a list of the best Rails resources the Web has to offer, covering installation (both manual and automatic, plus web hosts), tutorials (beginner and advanced topics), books, blogs, forums, cheat sheets, code snippets and API documents. More…

8 Defensive Programming Best Practices to Prevent Breaking Your Sites
This article describes some software development best practices that have been used to prevent problems that can break Web sites. More…

Faster PHP Apps - Profile Your Code with Xdebug
Using Xdebug and WinCacheGrind or KCacheGrind to profile PHP script execution. More…

Technorati Tags: programming diggs, top programming diggs

Free Computer Book Sites listed by Google

Posted: May 15th, 2007, 5:25am CEST by computer_teacher

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Here is a Google search that returns and links to 7 sites (out of the first 10 results listed) that provide freely available computer and programming online books. These cover several areas, including: Java, JavaBeans, Java Servlets, Perl, Networking, Unix, Web Development, Web Design, Oracle PL/SQL, XML, Linux, Python, C++, VB.Net, ASP.Net, Ruby, and Apache.

Technorati Tags: free computer books, free programming books, programming books, online computer books

Enterprise Authentication Review

Posted: May 14th, 2007, 6:05pm CEST by computer_teacher

Technorati Tags: enterprise authentication, authentication, security tokens

Computer, Networking, and Hardware Tips

Posted: May 14th, 2007, 4:52pm CEST by computer_teacher

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ComputerFreeTips.com provides free online Computer Tips, Networking Tips and Hardware Tips. It claims to offer over 10,000 computer, network, and hardware tips and techniques. These will help you handle and learn how to administer computers you need to control and use.

Technorati Tags: Computer Tips, Networking Tips, Hardware Tips

June 2007 (18 eBooks) →