The publication of this article marks a point where Capgemini officially adds Ruby to it’s service offerings (although some job offerings like this has mentioned it previously).

Here are some short extracts that I translated for your convenience:

[...]Ruby on Rails opens up towards a more flexible development process, where it’s much easier to implement client requirements as the project runs. In collaboration with Capgemini , this means that it’s possible to lower price and time-to-market significantly for a product. But also to improve the quality of the final product

Capgemini has recently proved that prototype development in advance of actual implementation can improve the result significantly. Jesper Rønn-Jensen, developer at Capgemini Denmark:

»We have had working prototypes up and running in a matter of hours. A specific example was a project we decided to implement in Ruby on Rails. Originally the project was estimated at 400 hours in Microsoft .Net. With Ruby on Rails we could deliver it in 110 hours.«

…

A prototype can be an experimental version of an unknown product, but can also be an early version of a future product, where the prototype along with a supplementary requirements specification can be used to visualize what the future system will work. The client gets a visualization of it’s ideas and will also get an idea of what further possibilities that can be added.

Instead of writing detailed requirements documentation, we can develop a prototype that gives the client a concrete base to make decisions upon. At the same time it also provides the opportunity for our clients to challenge our ideas and thoughts, which only improves the product,

adds Mads Buus Westmark.

If somebody is interested in providing a full translation, please do so … (i will probably translate more of the article at a later point or if you want it).

Photo by Reimar Juul (reimarjuul.com)

Technorati Tags: capgemini, prototyping, ruby on rails, rails, ruby

Mads and I decided to add a few quotes of our own on the list — basically to provoke a bit internally. One of the provocations were to call us “Ruby on Rails pioneers”. The reason for that is actually that a Danish newspaper last year called us that when describing this way of working.

”Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it”

- Alan Perlis
(American computer scientist, inventor of ALGOL)

”Expansion means complexity and complexity decay”

- C. Northcote Parkinson
(British historian and author)

”Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before”

- Franz Kafka

”Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability”

- Edsger Dijkstra
(Dutch mathematician, inventor of Shortest Path First Algorithm)

” UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity”

- Dennis Ritchie
(Inventor of C and and Unix core developer)

“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough”

- Charles Dudley Warner
(American essayist and novelist)

“The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity”

- Bill Gates
(Inventor of DOS and Windows)

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

- Leonardo da Vinci

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”

- Confucius

Project success is not product success

- Jeff Patton, Agile Alliance

”Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it”

- Alan Perlis
(American computer scientist, inventor of ALGOL)

“At a certain point, waterfall project development models force us to stop becoming smarter”

- Jesper Rønn-Jensen
(Capgemini Ruby on Rails pioneer)

“Enterprise? – A colossal spaceship from the 80’s flown by people with bad taste: Highly advanced, but purely fictional”

- Mads Buus Westmark
(Capgemini Ruby on Rails pioneer)

“Agile consultants: pricey, but not enterpricey”

- Mads Buus Westmark
(Capgemini Ruby on Rails pioneer)

More info:

• Justaddwater: Ruby on Rails as rapid prototyping tool (April 2006)
• Justaddwater: Selling Ruby, Rails, and Agile Project Management (February 3rd)
• Justaddwater: Danish Newspaper Interview: Capgemini on Rails (February 2007)

Feel free to add any quote you think should be added to this list.

Technorati Tags: agile, quotes, simplicity, enterprise, ruby on rails, productivity, prototyping

Here are a few photos from our internal Capgemini kickoff:

The sign says “Test yourself: Project manager — can you handle it”. Purpose: Show the difference between waterfall-like project management (left) and a more holistic approach (the fountain on the right)

Me and Mads at our presentation booth just before people arrive

UPDATE: Added the following photos taken by Tobias

Technorati Tags: ruby, rails, agile, web, development, capgemini, madsbuus, jesperrønnjensen, presentation, trade show, project manager, waterfall

Here is the talk proposal:

Title: Screenscraping as a tool for changing the (legacy) world

Conference: RailsConf Europe 2007
Type/Duration: 45 Minute Conference Session
Audience Level: Intermediate
Audience Type: web developers, programmers

Description Short:

Tired of your existing corporate legacy application? Show them you can do better! Learn how to make your own Rails version of a website with ugly UI, bad user feedback, no API.

Use these tools and techniques to build your own, better, user interface on top of an old legacy backend.

Description:

You sometimes come across web applications that are really bad: Ugly UI, bad user feedback, minimal usability, no API.

To improve such an app, a rails hacker may have to prove him/herself by prototyping improvements first.

Rails makes it possible actually “taking over” parts of a legacy app, by presenting the user with a rails UI that submits back to the original app. A prototype that works against the legacy app and is usable and testable by real users.

This session will present you with the techniques and tools you need to do this:

* Advanced two-way screen/form scraping from “bad” legacy applications
* Guessing the data model.
* Screenscraping tools and their strengths and weaknesses.
* Helper tools and how to use them (http sniffing, browser submittal, DOM, CSS selector tools, etc)

Along with this, we will discuss how we used this technique on a particular internal timetracking application, and in particular the lessons learned on how to navigate a Rails prototype into the political game in a world of legacy systems.

Screenscraping as a prototyping strategy could be just what you need in a political environment where it’s hard to convince management to build an existing legacy application in Rails.

Mads is the ideal co-presenter for this talk. He is a highly skilled programmer, very opinionated about software development, and also entertaining to listen to. We have quite some work to do, as we have plans to take this talk a step further. And Christian Dalager has promised to help us out, which makes me look very much forward to this. Not only the presentation itself. But also the process of creating our code. (For now, I can say only that we will be coding a tool to make it even easier to API-ify a legacy app.)

See you at RailsConf, Berlin, September 17-19!

Technorati Tags: rails, rubyonrails, event, railsconf, conference, oreilly, berlin, copenhagenrb, madsbuus, dalager, legacy

Sorry to have you waiting. There are two main reasons why I have kept it private:

1. I wanted to check that the description worked well for me. And today I got my new laptop.
2. It surprised me that a password protected article shows up on the front-page, RSS feeds, etc.

As I found out the original file was published, I felt that I could not remove it even though I was not ready to publish entirely.

WordPress flaw or feature?

I think its hard to imagine that Wordpress publish password protected articles on purpose (even though it’s only the headline).

If this really is a feature, I would prefer another feature: To be able to publish a “stealth” article, password protected that should not show up on the frontpage or in RSS feeds. Is this feature already available? If so, there is some bad usability involved preventing me from using the password protection as I wanted to :)

Now, the article  “Prototyping Ruby on Rails Checklist to Get Started”

Technorati Tags: ruby on rails, prototyping, rapid prototyping, preparation, rails, wordpress, usability, stealth, password, protection, rss, frontpage, private, privacy, blogging

I’ve run into the situation a couple of times where I get started on a client’s office, but due to delays and politics it takes time to get a proper versioning control server set up.

It turned out to be easy when I figured out the where to find the details on it. I’m running windows XP, don’t know how this differs on other operating systems.

1. Install TortoiseSVN, find the latest .exe in the binaries folder
2. In windows explorer find the root folder for where you want your repository (this should be different than where your code workspace is).
3. Create a new folder. In this example, I choose “<code>C:\svn-repo<code>”
4. In windows explorer, right click and select “TortoiseSVN” > “Create repository here…”
   
5. Select “native filesystem (FSFS)”
   
   
6. Check in your code. Go to your workspace folder, right click it an select “TortoiseSVN” > “Import…”
   
7. Now write the url of you file repository. In my case, “
   file:///C:/svn-repo/projectname

   ”
   
   Also remember to put in a commit message

8. UPDATE (forgot to write these very important steps below):
   Now, delete your source files. You just comitted them to the repository. Don’t worry, they will be back in a moment. (If you are the cautious type like me, you probably just move the files to somewhere else…)
9. Now it’s time to check out the files from subversion. Right click and choose “Check out…” in the context menu. Then select your repository, in my case “
   file:///C:/svn-repo/projectname

   “. And you’re done!

From now on, your code is versioned, and can later be ported to the real subversion repository (any comments on how this is done would be greatly appreciated). Now, you can commit changes, view and diff changes, merge and roll back. Just like you would do in a normal code repository.

Advanced use

For user and access control it’s possible to modify the config files in the subversion /conf directory. The files in

has the info (although it’s not very self-explanatory).

The repository is only set up for file access, so you will need to share your repository in order for more developers to use it.

A better (and slightly more complicated) strategy is to use Apache as a frontend webserver and set it up to serve your subversion repository via that. If you want details on that I suggest reading:

• Svn.spears.at: Subversion for Windows with Apache server HOWTO
• Joe White: Mere-Moments Guide to installing a Subversion server on Windows

All in all, this can be a great benefit and speed things up in enterprise environments, where many chefs are involved in the most basic tasks. Please feel free to add your own advice and tips in the comments.

Technorati Tags: svn, subversion, tortoisesvn, windows, xp, local, repository

Here is a brief reminder to myself before starting up a prototyping session.

Some of the activities below are done only once on the current machine, some of them you must do with every project. I just wanted to have it all on the same list.

Laptop preparations

This is for my Windows XP laptop:

• Subversion repository up and running (so you can immediately add the project).
• I do this by installing TortoiseSVN and following this explanation in “how to create a temporary local Subversion repository“.
• Add subversion users and authorization for the current project
• Download latest version of Ruby on Rails (i tend to use latest stable, but latest from trunk would be OK as long as all tests pass). See section on Ruby gems and plugins
• Download and prepare editor (currently I use e-texteditor. As a sidenote, Aptana released a beta version with rails support the other day but it didn’t work for me out of the box, so I stick to e-texteditor.)
• Let E-texteditor do the Cygwin install (this way, rails bundles work without extra effort).
• Then run cygwin install manually to add the following packets:
  subversion, curl, wget, openssh, and I need some text browsers as well for testing pupose (Links and Lynx).
  The cygwin install file is in “C:\Program Files\e\support\bin”
• Check that your database drivers work and are running the basic operations. I prefer SQLite as it’s faster to run from my laptop computer and tests are running faster.
• I prefer a good diff tool like ExamDiff Pro (which tells me the exact parts of lines that are changed), although the built-in diff tool in TortoiseSVN is decent.

Ruby gems and Rails plugins

Assuming you have Ruby and RubyGems installed, install the other gems needed:

Get hold of ActiveScaffold plugin and my LocalizationSimplified plugin (project page), and Rails trunk if you like. (maybe I should also add Smart-Form, and the Caboose sample app, but won’t add it here before I try it out)

With the help of Piston, it’s easy to administer plugins and version them:

Client preparation

At the client’s place, I look for the following preperational work:

• Find documentation for all accessible apis and services
• Try it
• Locate people that might know about the services and apis available
• investigate authorisation and access issues regarding services and apis
• locate other data, lists, sample data, categories that could potentially be used as fixture data in the prototype app.
• Have a look at existing design. Perhaps design manuals, homepage design, fetch logos or existing graphical material. There might be a page or two that can be used as layout inspiration (Not many pages I see are coded the way I want to build the HTML, so usually I make my own layout.rhtml file).
• Find some standard CSS based layouts that fit your need. More inspiration in the sidebar article “More CSS inspiration”.

More CSS inspiration

Good example from Roger Johanssons 2 column layout. For 3 column layouts, I have not yet found one that fits my needs perfectly. Previosuly I used redmelon’s 3 col layout for Nemkonto (redmelons website and old link is currently not working). A place to get inspiration is the 3-column layout page at CSS-discuss (be warned that there are too many alternatives there).

Your tips, tricks and suggestions

Let me know if you have anything that you would like to add to the list, discuss, or think is irrelevant. I’d love to update this post with your suggestions. Main criteria for me: Fast up and running (Getting immediate productivity). Team collaboration in code (so no complex setup features). Please add your good suggestions and comments below.

Technorati Tags: ruby on rails, prototyping, rapid prototyping, preparation, rails, ruby, setup

In short, the presentation touched

• Prototyping, how and when to get up to speed
• Cases from the public and financial sectors where we have been prototyping
• Experience with different tools, such as Axure and Ruby on Rails
• Lots of good questions from the audience

We were around 25 people in total, and both Jesper and I were impressed with the good and relevant questions that everybody had. Actually, it was a shame we were not able to stay for the afternoon group discussions about the different presentations.

I had a talk with Rolf Molich afterwards and he seemed quite impressed with one of the cases we presented. Two things seemed to have made a special impression: That it took only 20 hours before we could present a rich working Ruby on Rails prototype for the client. And the way we had added ability to find competences as well as users and their most important contact details in the same autocomplete field.

(sorry, but no screenshot here since they contained real data :)

Here are the links Jesper promised to post with comparison of different prototyping tools. I also added a link to a more detailed look on Ruby on Rails as a prototyping tool (published by Jesper here on justaddwater.dk).

• Boxes and Arrows: Visio Replacement? You Be the Judge (Nov 2006)
  
• GUUUI.com: Results from a survey of web prototyping tools usage (2002)
• Justaddwater.dk: Ruby on Rails as rapid prototyping tool (Apr 2006)

Technorati Tags: event, meeting, prototyping, visio, rubyonrails, axure, ruby on rails, rolf molich, dansk it

We just received the transcript that I ordered and I have made it available here on Justaddwater.dk in the different formats:

• HTML Transcript Ruby on Rails podcast 041 (HTML version 28KB) (recommended)
• Transcript Ruby on Rails podcast 041 (Text version 17KB)
• Transcript Ruby on Rails podcast 041 (RTF version 22KB)
• Local copy of podcast (23MB mp3 file)

Thanks to Obie Fernandez for taking time and initiative for this podcast, and thanks to Geoff Grosenbach for publishing.

Links to original resources: HTML, text, RTF, podcast homepage. Transcript sponsored by our employer, Capgemini Denmark.

Technorati Tags: ruby on rails, ruby, rails, podcast, obie fernandez, geoffrey grosenbach, transcript, copenhagenrb, capgemini

Hobo is an Open-Source project, designed to make development with Rails even faster than it already is. It features:

• A template engine that extends Rails’ standard ERB templates with user-defined tags
• A powerful library of pre-defined tags for knocking up ajaxified data-driven sites in a snap
  (lots still to do — help us)
• Smart support for ajax – easily re-render fragments of your page without extracting them into partials

And further down in the release announcement:

• Hobo extends Rails is a number of ways, to let you build full blown web applications very quickly and easily.
• Hobo lets you add dynamic Ajax interfaces to your application with no extra programming.

But the best part (I think) is the better support for Ajax user interface development, as is mentioned briefly:

• Hobo can speed up the creation of rich, complex web applications as well as simple internal apps and rapid prototypes.

• Hobo is a great way for newcomers to Ruby on Rails to learn and practice agile, iterative application development.

Please do note that the team mentions that they don’t consider the release (0.4) stable enough yet to go into production code. The team made a screencast with feature highlights available at the Hobo blog.

Other mentions:

• Pune Ruby: Play with Hobo
• MucoSoft: Hobo, Ruby on much more simple Rails
• Red Ferret: Hobo – the ultra fast web app builder for Rails
• Justaddwater.dk: Ruby on Rails as rapid prototyping tool

Technorati Tags: hobo, prototyping, html, ruby on rails, business case, capgemini, productivity, work, rubyonrails, rails