Munckfish.net

Finally got around to reading Modular Architectures with Ruby from Ruby Code and Style.

The article shows how to write extensible modular architectures in Ruby. Essentially it describes what maybe more commonly recognised as a “plugin” architecture. Where new functionality can be added to an application almost transparently with minimum cost in configuration and code, simply by adding a “pluggable” module to an application’s library path. The author cites Eclipse, Javadoc and the Apache HTTPD webserver as three examples of well known modular systems.

It’s appears to be pitched at programmers new to Ruby but not necessarily new to programming, as well as developers who need to create extendable systems. Actually, because Ruby is so concise and readable it’s great as a general introduction to “plugins” in general, regardless of what language the reader knows. This also makes it ideal for students interested in software architecture and design patterns.

See the discussion board threads for some interesting thoughts on ways to make the example more “Ruby-like” and resource efficient.

Google Base seems to be a very worthy project, but my first use of it was disappointing. All I came across in the technology categories were agency job adverts and rubbish. To top that most of the job adverts were out of date! Clearly it’s going to need serious policing otherwise it’ll be spammed to death and full of useless out of date rubbish.

This isn’t to say that I can’t see the huge potential in it. I find the continuing move towards open, semantic, meta-data driven information storage very interesting. Attributes, tags or meta-data whatever you want to call them are a great way to free up the way data is organized in an application so that each user can use it in their own way and find new ways to view it, and new uses for those views.

While investigating Rails I decided to create a Mind Map as an excuse to try out the new version of Freemind (v0.8.0). The map is a little bit sketchy but I enjoyed making it. Personally, I find creating Mind Maps extremely useful when learning about something new.

• rails_mindmap.zip - zipped Freemind .mm file.
• rails_mindmap.svg - SVG export. Looks pretty good in Firefox 1.5’s SVG viewer.

(Click to enlarge)