Get to the Point: Ruby and Rails Presentation Slides

J

John W. Long

Hi,

Ryan Platte and I just did a presentation to the Chicago ACM about Ruby
this evening. Our slides are available for others to use here:

http://johnwlong.com/slides/gettothepoint/

Comments and suggestions are welcome. We would like to present this
again in the future, so it would be good to clarify things a little.

Please note: slides are best if viewed in Firefox or Safari.
 
D

Devin Mullins

Cool! My browser's sorta, uh, frozen right now (that's what happens when
you have ~200 tabs open), so I can't look at it, but you might consider
sticking a link to it on the Why Ruby? page
(www.rubygarden/ruby?WhyRuby, I believe).

Devin
 
J

Josh Charles

Comments and suggestions are welcome. We would like to present this
again in the future, so it would be good to clarify things a little.

Excellent Presentation. The only thing I didn't quite understand was
the "method_missing" stuff. I haven't encountered that before; could
you add to that a little bit?

Josh
 
B

Bil Kleb

John said:
Hi,

Ryan Platte and I just did a presentation to the Chicago ACM about Ruby
this evening. Our slides are available for others to use here:

http://johnwlong.com/slides/gettothepoint/

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

From Tufte's "The Smallest Effective Difference"
chapter in /Visual Explanations/, I would tone
down the syntax highlighting contrasts by an
order of magnitude.

Otherwise, quite refreshing. Thanks for sharing.

What's the wget or curl command to grab the
lot so I can stick it on a disc to give to
some newbies?

Thanks,
 
C

Curt Hibbs

------=_Part_13696_9647129.1126797569914
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

Ruby uses the same model of method invocation as Smalltalk. Conceptually,=
=20
you send a "message" to an object. The message has a name and a set of=20
parameters. Ruby attempts to find a method definition that matches the=20
signature of the message in the target object's class and each of its=20
superclasses.=20

If no matching method is found, Ruby sends a "method_missing" message to th=
e=20
object instead (including the original message as a parameter). Most object=
s=20
don't implement method_missing and the implementation in Ruby's root object=
=20
is invoked (which output the standard error message).

If the object does implement method_missing, then it gets control and can d=
o=20
whatever it wants with the original message. In the case of this example, i=
t=20
forwards the original message to the object it is proxying.

This is a powerful feature when you are building reusable frameworks. Rails=
=20
uses this to provide "virtual" implementations of its find_* methods.=20
FreeRIDE uses this to implement attributes on its Databus nodes.

Hope that helped.

Curt

=20

=20
Excellent Presentation. The only thing I didn't quite understand was
the "method_missing" stuff. I haven't encountered that before; could
you add to that a little bit?
=20
Josh
=20

------=_Part_13696_9647129.1126797569914--
 
E

Emiel van de Laar

* Bil Kleb ([email protected]) said:
From Tufte's "The Smallest Effective Difference"
chapter in /Visual Explanations/, I would tone
down the syntax highlighting contrasts by an
order of magnitude.

Otherwise, quite refreshing. Thanks for sharing.

What's the wget or curl command to grab the
lot so I can stick it on a disc to give to
some newbies?

This worked for me:

%wget -r http://johnwlong.com/slides/gettothepoint/

Had to get the images manually though because wget doesn't know anything
about CSS.

/images/background.gif
/images/code-bottom-right.gif
/images/code-top-left.gif
/images/prev.gif
/images/next.gif
/images/stripe.png

Perhaps John could provide a tar or zip. :)

Emiel
 
J

John W. Long

Bil said:
From Tufte's "The Smallest Effective Difference"
chapter in /Visual Explanations/, I would tone
down the syntax highlighting contrasts by an
order of magnitude.

I've never read this book. Can you explain the reasoning behind what you
suggest in a little more detail?
Otherwise, quite refreshing. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!

What's the wget or curl command to grab the
lot so I can stick it on a disc to give to
some newbies?

It should be available in the Why Ruby project documentation in a little
bit. I'm waiting on Curt Hibbs to approve it:

http://rubyforge.org/docman/?group_id=251
 
B

Bil Kleb

John said:
I've never read this book.

If you're in the U.S., I highly recommend making every
effort to get yourself to one of Tufte's short courses,

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

(You'll get a copy of his books as part of the course
fee.)
Can you explain the reasoning behind what you
suggest in a little more detail?

Many some quotations from that chapter, will help?

Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible,
but still clear and effective.

/small/ differences allow /more/ differences

In designing information, then, the idea is to use
/just notable differences/, visual elements that
make a clear difference but no more -- contrasts
that are definite, effective, /and/ minimal.

when /everything/ is emphasized, /nothing/ is
emphasized; the design will often be noisy,
cluttered, and informationally flat.

Regards,
 
C

Curt Hibbs

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Content-Disposition: inline

=20
In designing information, then, the idea is to use
/just notable differences/, visual elements that
make a clear difference but no more -- contrasts
that are definite, effective, /and/ minimal.
=20
when /everything/ is emphasized, /nothing/ is
emphasized; the design will often be noisy,
cluttered, and informationally flat.


Hmmm... reminds me of when I find a chapter of a book so interested that I=
=20
use my highlighter on 80% of it and then find my highlighting to be totally=
=20
useless! :)

Curt

------=_Part_19430_7648088.1126869198806--
 
H

Hugh Sasse

[...]
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

(You'll get a copy of his books as part of the course
fee.)
Can you explain the reasoning behind what you
suggest in a little more detail?

Many some quotations from that chapter, will help?

Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible,
but still clear and effective.

/small/ differences allow /more/ differences

In designing information, then, the idea is to use
/just notable differences/, visual elements that
make a clear difference but no more -- contrasts
that are definite, effective, /and/ minimal.

Yes, but remember that not everyone has perfect eyesight!!!
Your values for /just not[ic]able differences/ should probably
be a few dB's up if you have. And some people are colour blind.
when /everything/ is emphasized, /nothing/ is
emphasized; the design will often be noisy,
cluttered, and informationally flat.

This is certainly true. [Caveat lector: I've not looked at the
slides for this presentation yet, so am not criticising those at
all. These are general remarks.]
 
B

Bil Kleb

Curt said:
Hmmm... reminds me of when I find a chapter of a book so interest[ing] that I
use my highlighter on 80% of it and then find my highlighting to be totally
useless! :)

Once upon a time, I read a recommendation to
highlightstuff with which you do not agree or
understand and *not* the stuff you with which
you agree.

Later,
 
H

Han Holl

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Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
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=20
Hi,
=20
Ryan Platte and I just did a presentation to the Chicago ACM about Ruby
this evening. Our slides are available for others to use here:
=20
http://johnwlong.com/slides/gettothepoint/
=20
Comments and suggestions are welcome. We would like to present this
again in the future, so it would be good to clarify things a little.
=20
Please note: slides are best if viewed in Firefox or Safari.
=20
--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com
=20
=20
On slide 2, it would be clearer to do:
# Output "Ruby Rocks!
Ruby Rocks!
Ruby Rocks!
Ruby Rocks!
Ruby Rocks!
"
but it's a bit awkward as a comment.

Han

------=_Part_8335_28562607.1126873485974--
 
B

Brian Schröder

=20
If you're in the U.S., I highly recommend making every
effort to get yourself to one of Tufte's short courses,
=20
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses
=20
(You'll get a copy of his books as part of the course
fee.)
=20
=20
Many some quotations from that chapter, will help?
=20
Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible,
but still clear and effective.
=20
/small/ differences allow /more/ differences
=20
In designing information, then, the idea is to use
/just notable differences/, visual elements that
make a clear difference but no more -- contrasts
that are definite, effective, /and/ minimal.
=20
when /everything/ is emphasized, /nothing/ is
emphasized; the design will often be noisy,
cluttered, and informationally flat.
=20

For my taste too many words in this passage are highlighted. If it is
really a one to one quotation from the book including emphasis, I
think he may not have understood how to depict information clearly and
not burry it under emphasis noise ;-)

regards,

Brian


--=20
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/

Stringed instrument chords: http://chordlist.brian-schroeder.de/
 
B

Bil Kleb

Brian said:
Bil Kleb wrote:

Ma[ybe] some quotations from that chapter, will help?

Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible,
but still clear and effective.

/small/ differences allow /more/ differences

In designing information, then, the idea is to use
/just notable differences/, visual elements that
make a clear difference but no more -- contrasts
that are definite, effective, /and/ minimal.

when /everything/ is emphasized, /nothing/ is
emphasized; the design will often be noisy,
cluttered, and informationally flat.

For my taste too many words in this passage are highlighted.

Agreed, but these are just the key sentences out of
a 6-page chapter (which were easy to identify because
of their emphasis). ;)

My apologies for not making that clear.

Regards,
 
Z

Zach Dennis

John said:
Hi,

Ryan Platte and I just did a presentation to the Chicago ACM about Ruby
this evening. Our slides are available for others to use here:

http://johnwlong.com/slides/gettothepoint/

Comments and suggestions are welcome. We would like to present this
again in the future, so it would be good to clarify things a little.

Please note: slides are best if viewed in Firefox or Safari.

Thanks for posting this John. I am going to go over later today. I have
one question thus far....Are you allowing public use of the look in your
slides for other ruby presentations?

Zach
 
Z

Zach Dennis

Zach said:
Thanks for posting this John. I am going to go over later today. I have
one question thus far....Are you allowing public use of the look in your
slides for other ruby presentations?

I just realized that this was posted about a month ago. I do not know
how it just now showed up in my inbox. =)

Zach
 
J

John W. Long

It's fine with me if you use the HTML and images in your own Ruby
presentations. Right now I will retain rights on the look, images, and
design.
 

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