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I finally got round to making use of Git, the distributed source code management tools much loved by Open Source projects like the Linux Kernel and now Ruby on Rails. It had been on the long list of things to have a look at for quite a while but for the majority of my personal projects SVN is just fine. The reason that led me to finally run sudo port install git-core was the new Ditz command line issue tracking software release on Gitorious by William Morgan.

Now, a command line issue tracker is maybe kind of niche and a little geeky. But most desktop or web based issue trackers just seem to wind me up and I like small tools that fit in with my command line centric workflow. I managed to clone my own copy of Ditz to have a play with. I ran into a few initial problems but nothing a good tutorial and a helpful mailing list couldn’t fix.

I’m not just playing around either; Ditz comes with the nice ability to generate a set of static HTML files representing your issue database. I’ve committed and pushed a few modifications and enhancements onto my clone – mainly validation, semantic markup improvements and a smattering of microformats (work in progress) in the templates and a couple of markup generation helpers in the Ruby code. I plan on working up the interface a little as well but like any good web designer I’m starting with the underlying markup structure.

A few other enhancements I’d love to see in Ditz or a clone I could pull from include the ability to use SQLite rather than the default YAML for larger projects, automatic generation of RSS feeds alongside the HTML (although I’ve started implementing hAtom) and maybe automated deployment to a remote host over FTP or SSH.

The distributed nature of Git appears to be pushed as the main advantage to those developers taking a look. But I think this is, in many cases, is not that important compared to the familiarity that comes from having used SVN or similar for a while. What I think just might be it’s real strength is that Git is a social source control system. For Open Source projects like Ditz this is a potentially game changing move. The ease with which anyone can contribute and take things in strange directions without affecting the overall effort is fantastic. It removes barriers to entry for contributors and means making small quick changes is much easier and more immediate. With both Gitorious and Github wrapping Git in a shiny web based interface that focuses on these social aspects it will be interesting to see if this leads to more or faster Open Source collaboration efforts.

Popularity: 12%

Tagged Git, Ruby, Ditz, Gitorious, microformats, Open Source

I’m just back from another great few days in Scotland for The Highland Fling. The biggest difference for me this year was I was lucky enough to be one of the speakers. Amongst such internet luminaries as Simon Willison, Norm, Chris Mills, Christian Heilman, Aral Balkan and Paul Boag I presented on a few web building blogs (HTTP, URLs) and on some suggestions for API design. The presentation is available on slideshare for anyone who would like a peek.

I think the topic went down well and it triggered some good discussion around the nascent issue of API design. One thing is clear – we need some good resources filled with examples on the subject. More and more people are going to be extending various bits of software with an API and it would be nice to think they will all be a pleasure to use. In the meantime is you have any features or guidelines your like to see in APIs then suggest them over here.

The rest of the conference was great. I particularly enjoyed Norms little history lesson and Aral has me at least thinking about installing all the Flash and Flex tool chain. The highlight for me was probably the format. After each presentation we got a little grilling by Paul. He came up with a few thorny questions for each of us as well as fielding questions from the audience. Hopefully my stint on the sofa made sense to a few people, certainly everyone else threw out a few interesting titbits that probably wouldn’t have been talked about otherwise. Also, Chris Mills nearly managed to make Paul cry with laughter by striking something of a rock star pose for most of his interview.

I’ve just uploaded a handful of photos from the event and surrounding geek gatherings too. All in all the event was great (again). With the close venue, interviews mixed in and general friendly atmosphere The Highland Fling had an intimate feel often missing from events. Huge credit goes to Alan and hopefully we’ll all be back next year.

Popularity: 12%

Tagged thehighlandfling, API

Quick post to say BarCampNorthEast tickets are now available. We’re starting off releasing 50 tickets and we’ll see how that goes. We’re really not sure how quickly these will disappear so get them while they’re hot. More tickets will be available later as well.

barcampnortheast.eventwax.com/barcampnortheast/register

The event is looking like its going to be great. I’m really happy we managed to find a venue that would let us do the whole sleeping over thing. And with Thinking Digital the week before and rumours of a geekdinner on the friday night it’s going to be busy few days in Newcastle.

We’re still on the lookout for a few sponsors as well so if anyone is interested in sponsorship opportunities, or just has a few questions feel free to drop me a line.

Popularity: 10%

Tagged BarCampNorthEast

I’ve been noticing an interesting trend recently, not one I have any empirical evidence for mind, but one I though interesting non-the-less. Parts of the webstandards world appear to all be playing with Django. Part of this has been the odd mention down the pub, at barcamps or at SXSW this year. But the main source of information on the topic has been twitter. To name but a few I’ve seen tweets from Steve, Ross and Aral recently and Stuart and Cyril literally wont shut up about it.

What’s interesting is that this didn’t happen with Rails, not in the corner of the pub that generally talks more about markup, javascript and CSS anyway. I’ve worked on a couple of Rails projects both personally and commercially, and I’ve just launched a little pet project build with django called doesyourapi. What follows is, to my mind, a few reasons why I think this trend exists and also why I think it will continue, at least for the time being.

People

You can’t ignore the personal touch, and in Simon Willison and Stuart Langridge we already have two people who bridge the community and the web standards crowd, at least in the UK. Personal technology choices at least are often driven by personal correspondence.

Templating

Django’s templating introduces a very simple syntax and nothing else. Rails lets you have the full power of Ruby to do with as you will within your views. Rails also makes heavy use of helpers, further adding to the complexity of views. Now I have mixed views here, based on my own skills more than anything. I know I’d feel much more comfortable throwing someone with good markup skills at a project using Django than Rails. For the most part with Django you use the html you’re used to, Rails often wants you to change this to helpers – in much the same way as ASP.NET does in fact. I think some of this comes from the Rails don’t repeat yourself philosophy obsession. Sometimes this leads to programmatic complexity which makes working with templates more akin to programming, even if it means less duplication. I’ve yet to work on a particularly complex Django project so maybe this simplicity might become a limitation to work around? Always a possibility.

Default craziness

Some of the bits and pieces that come bundled with Rails are just plain wrong, the Javascript helpers being one example. The abuse of HTTP by default in some of the scaffolding code being another. Oh, and the markup coming out of various helpers as well. In trying to help the application developer Rails gets in the way of the professional webstandards types. Django does next to none of this for you. Programmers coming from Rails might see this as missing features. Frontend types prefer this clean slate approach because it means you don’t have to fight the backend (sometimes including people) for control of the output. Note that you can work around much of this (in the same way as you can work around ASP.NET if you have to), it’s just nicer to not have to.

Other craziness

Rails people love Ruby. After all it’s better than Java (it’s also a pretty loveable programming language too). But like computer science departments everywhere many Rails people also dislike or simply put up with HTML, CSS and Javascript. If they can find a way of not having to write these and write something else (Rails people are also obsessed with domain specific languages) instead. Hence we have the likes of HAML and SASS. The problem is that us frontend loving folk quite like writing CSS (well, sometimes) and absolutely love writing HTML. Most of the time for good reasons too – just look at microformats for an example. Frontend developers tend to like using a mix of tools, predominantly backend developers not so much it seems.

Personally I find it interesting. You could quite easily flip many of these arguments around to support why so many people are using Rails. For two frameworks with similar goals and uses it’s interesting to see the early philosophical differences playing out in the real world. It might be interesting to see what happens with frameworks like Merb as well which seems to be set out to avoid many of these perceived issues with Rails. So, have anyone else noticed anything similar? Or even the complete opposite?

Popularity: 51%

Tagged webstandards, Django, SXSW, Rails, doesyourapi, Ruby

BarCampNorthEast is go. A few people have finally got together and sorted out the long promised barcamp in Newcastle upon Tyne.

We’re going to be holding the event in the middle of Newcastle, at The Art Works on the weekend of the 24th/25th of May. That’s a whole two months away, ample time for everyone to make arrangements hopefully. From the early discussions we were always set upon going the whole hog and having a two day event. The venue is big enough for people to sleep over as well if they want which is great. It keeps the cost down for anyone visiting as well as meaning we can play Werewolf all night. We’re piggy backing on the Thinking Digital conference as well so hopefully some of the people from that will stick around for the barcamp.

We have the requisite Barcamp wiki page as well as a listing on Upcoming. Feel free to indicate your interest on either of these. Registration isn’t open just yet, but we should be opening that up next week on Tuesday 1st April at 11:00am. Look for the link on here, on twitter, on the upcoming and barcamp wiki pages and anywhere else I can think of to shout about it.

Feel free to contact me with any questions. If you’re not sure what all the fuss is about then have a look at the barcamp site. And if you’ve never been outside London before then maybe this is your chance. Newcastle is only two and a half hours away by a train with free wifi. We’re also on the lookout for a few sponsors; if your interested drop me a line.

Popularity: 7%

Tagged BarCampNorthEast, barcamp