blog.raydenuni.com

Philosophical Ranting of an Engineer

Summer Update 2

July 22nd, 2006

Work

So I found work since I last posted. I’m writing a Rails app for a guy in Van Nuys. Its fun and challenging. Hopefully it won’t take me much longer. Once It gets close to production state I’ll let you guys know more about it.

Since I began working on this new project I haven’t touched Showcase. This isn’t to say I have forgotten about it, I just feel that I’m learning more by working on this new project. It is similar in many ways and I’ll be able to use the more sophisticated methods I’m learning from it to make a better Showcase.

Speaking of learning new Rails stuff, I watched David Heinemeier Hansson’s keynote address at RailsConf 2006. DHH is th e creator of Ruby on Rails. He had a lot of ineresting things to say, mostly concerning CRUD and using it to design your software, but he also spoke of some new Rails stuff that would be revolutionary, as well as some bleeding edge stuff he had only been working on a few days. If you have an hour to spare and want to learn about programming, not only Rails, I suggest you watch it. Follow along with a pdf of his slideshow.

I was able to directly use some of his CRUD ideas in my project. Approaching design from a CRUD point of view made my many-to-many relationship more manageable and more elegant.

All this thinking about CRUD has got me thinking.

Creating an Engine on Rails

I still want to write a 3D engine, although it is put on hold while I am doing a lot of Rails. It has always struck me that writing an engine seems like a sloppy thing. There is no agreen on organization, no framework for how an engine should be organized. Of course this means that I get to do all that for my engine, but why is this? Perhaps it is because all 3D engines have to be very specific and thus not much can be generalized. Or so few engines are written that putting forth the effort of writing a framework is pointless. I think neither of those is true. I look forward to really thinking about building a framework for my engine. Most likely I will be basing a lot of it off of Rails, as it is what I know, and I think it is organized very well. I can’t wait.

Sailboat

My dad and his good friend Scott bought a Coronado 15. This is a 15ft dinghy with a mainsail and a jib. It is designed for two people. My dad used to own one a long time ago and one of his favorite stories is of when he and a friend found the “ultimate wave” for a C15. The boat isn’t dog slow, nor is it as quick as something like a laser. I have not yet been out on the water, Scott took it out for the first time today, but I hope to sail it a lot before I go back to school.

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