That said, it does look interesting. And, naturally, some people are using Flex front-ends for Rails applications: one good resource in particular looks to be http://flexonrails.net/.

Also interesting is Project Sprouts, which is a gem and seems to make good use of ruby and rake to automate some aspects of ActionScript, AIR, and Flex development. I’ve had no time (yet) to give it a test drive, so this is nothing more than a pointer: if it sounds interesting, give it a look.

Since I’m thinking about ActionScript, this is as good a time as any to revisit the venerable ActionScript Jabberwocky. Enjoy.

The ActionScript Jabberwocky, from http://www.turdhead.com/2004/08/16/the-actionscript-jabberwocky/

Hence the title, as I realize anew what everyone already knows, that you learn more by doing something than by reading about it.

Nevertheless, there is something seductive about simply reading about a technology, rather than just diving in and using it. Well, if you’re a bibliophile, there is. And I don’t think that time is wasted; the reading I’d done about Rails did give me a good frame of reference to get started in. I didn’t have to ask what models or controllers did, where to find the routes (or what they were), I came in understanding the essentials. Well, perhaps the bare essentials, but for what it’s worth, it was there.

That said, I do think I could have probably come in knowing more if I had been building little apps rather than reading about them. That has become my new paradigm, if you will, and my unsolicited advice to those who would learn Rails, or any other web application method: just start building something. If you don’t know what to build, build a blog or a digg/reddit type clone. A vanilla version of any of those is simple enough to be doable by a beginner (I realize they can potentially get more complex; hence the qualifier “vanilla”), but still complex enough to force you to learn various different aspects of web application development: you need a database, you need some programming logic, you’ll need at least a minimal presentation of information, a way to get input from the end use, save it, order it, possibly filter it, probably a user-authentication piece, and so forth.

So, put the books down. Minimize the blogs and API documentation for a minute. (Just for a minute.) Just start sketching, building, and coding. Open up the APIs and/or books if and only if you just can’t go any further; as soon as you find what you need to get the next bit done, leave the documentation again, until you need it.

If you’re using Ruby and Rails, in particular, and if you’re starting to get the hang of how things work, you probably should even just start trying things without looking at the documentation. There’s a lot of automagical stuff going on in Rails, and you just might find that what you intuitively wanted to type is actually what works. If not, you’ll probably find that it was close, you just didn’t have the syntax quite right; but try it first, anyways; there’s really nothing like the rush of attempting to run a code-snippet based on a hunch, and then finding out that it does exactly what you thought it would do.

I know; this is obvious to everyone, you’ve been doing it this way for years. Bear with me, I’ll catch up.

Of all the various trends that have accompanied the wide range of the “web 2.0″ school of applications, the one feature that sticks out, that I really like, is the minimalist sign-up form. Whether they call it signing up, registering, creating an account, the trend has been:

• To ask you for less
• To make it quicker
• To give you options (login with OpenID, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo ID, etc.)
• To make any further information optional

It used to be that any time you “signed up” on a new website, it seemed that you had to go through a long form, including your address (what?), telephone number (you’re calling me?), username, first name, last name, email address, password (twice), favorite color, inseam measurements, and so forth. And for awhile, because that was the norm, I think people online simply accepted that.

No more, thank God. New web applications, if they don’t accept OpenID or an existing ID from a different service, generally just ask for an email address and a password. There’s no particular reason you can’t use an email address as a User ID for many applications, so why make it another field? If you want to have the option (for privacy reasons… not a bad idea), you can always allow people to set a username after signing up. Make it simple.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but as a result, my tolerance for old school, long, multiple page, sign up forms has dipped below zero. If I visit a new service and click “sign up”, chances are I’m just considering checking it out. If click “next”, and see Yet More Fields to fill out before I’m able to get into the application/web site… I’m liable to just close that tab and forget it.

Yet another example of why people who don’t really study physics probably shouldn’t be allowed to talk about it.

I always used to say I wanted to do something like this, but was waiting for “the right time”. Does that mean this is the Right Time? I guess since I’m doing it, by default the assumption is that, Yes, it is. Still, considering the big picture, if I were inclined to be pessimistic or risk-averse, I would still probably say it’s not quite the Right Time. More credit card debt should be paid off, more money should be socked away, I should have already invested in a newer laptop for a development machine, etc., etc.

What I’m seeing now (I know this is not an original thought, bear with me), is that if I were to think in those terms just described, the “Right Time” would effectively become never.

Am I advocating throwing caution to the wind and suggesting that you can quit your job on a dime and just go start? No, I’m actually not. What I’m thinking is that the Right Time to start — your business, your startup, your freelancing — is precisely When You Can.

That seems to resolve it right there. “When You Can” leaves it completely up to you. If you are (and stay) extremely risk averse, then “when you can” may well really be “never”. If you can calculate how much risk you can handle and create some contingency plans, then “when you can” might just be closer than you think.

Just some thoughts.

No longer: there is a version of Shiftspace available which works with Firefox 3.0… you can find it here; you will want to click on the “release userscript” in the bottom right-ish corner.

Should I add you’ll need Greasemonkey, first? Well, I guess I have, now.

While searching for this, I happened upon an app called Lily, which is a visual programming environment written in Javascript:

Lily is a browser-based, visual programming environment that lets people create programs graphically, without writing code, by drawing connections between data, images, sounds, text and graphics. Lily’s cross-platform, free, open source and is written in JavaScript. Did we mention it’s fun?

What does it all mean? I don’t know! Isn’t “it’s fun” enough for you?

Resolving this is fairly simple; create or edit .bashrc like so:

export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin

Ok, you’re done. Leave your shell and log back in, or source /etc/profile.

I would guess that the latest development version is close to what 11.0 will be, but I could be wrong.

Regardless that it’s full of messages from people who only seem to want to talk about my penis, difficult as it may be to believe, yes I am really sure.