If you are giving an “Introduction to CoffeeScript” talk at your local developer group in the future, I have a 2:30min video you might find exciting to show. CoffeeScript is so cool that I thought it really needed to be put to music. Hard rock music. AC/DC.

I finished my session at NordicRuby with this video and I think it helped get lots of people excited about CoffeeScript.

Because of it’s heavy dependence of the backing song – the screencast is boring without it – I’m kind of screwed as to how to distribute it to other presenters. The licensing rules of including music and it’s 600Mb size are prohibitive.

What the hell. I’ve included an inline sample above; and the links to the 600Mb version is below. All self-promotional “Dr Nic made this shiny video” bits have been removed. Go for gold. Share the CoffeeScript excitement.

NordicRuby

NordicRuby finished 5 days ago, but many of the attendees and speakers are only finally winding down. Executed with the style, excitement and pizazz of Unspace’s RubyFringe and FutureRuby conferences, I had a brilliant time in Gothenburg. If NordicRuby’s organiser’s Elabs host the event again in 2011 I highly recommend attending. Carefully selected and sequenced speakers from around the world, 30 minute talks with 30 minute breaks over two days, an hour of lightning talks each day, and parties every night. Phew.

To CJ and Lilly, the organisers, the other speakers and all the attendees, thanks for an awesome experience in Sweden. Looking forward to coming back next year.

Why CoffeeScript?

JavaScript has a wonderful feature or two: it’s everywhere and it’s getting really fast. Unfortunately, its syntax was heavily influenced by Java/C++ and other popular goliaths of the time. But the JavaScript runtime is sweet. JavaScript syntax, not so sweet.

Like .NET and it’s selection of languages, the JVM and it’s growing smorgasbord of languages, I think the JavaScript runtime could benefit from more experimentation with alternate languages and/or syntaxes. Objective-J was one attempt. CoffeeScript is another.

Of the two, I like CoffeeScript. A lot.

Demonstrating CoffeeScript at Dev meetups

The video flies through core ideas pretty quickly, so I ran through syntax examples on a slide first, and then said “You know, I think this would go better to music,” and played the video.

Download and Demo

The purpose of offering the 600Mb video version is for the growing number of people doing CoffeeScript talks at their local software dev groups. The music in it is not licensed, not mine, but sounds awesome.

Please play the video with speakers. AC/DC on mute is a cruel act. Also watching the text jump around without the music is probably weird to watch. AC/DC and CoffeeScript. Perfect match, I think.

Formats: Torrent | Download (600Mb)

Tack så mycket

Swedish for “Thank you very much,” pronounced like “tuck sa-meekeh” or thereabouts.

If you use the video at all, I’d really appreciate it if you left a comment below!

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Below are the slides and all the nice things people said about the talk, which has made me feel very good for sharing, and for the 60hr return flight from Brisbane to Toronto.

If you want to hear the jokes, and an Australian “mistaking” Canada for a state of America, perhaps wait for InfoQ to publish the video.

The slides

Nice things people said

Thanks to…

Elle Meredith who helped me design and theme the slides so they looked spot-on-awesome.

My two children for not being old enough to be disturbed by some of the things I said about them during the talk.

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2. Presentations RailsConf 2010: Contributing to Open Source Not sure how...

Today I actually found the thing. It’s red. The colour of the binding was my only chance to impose some sense of personalisation.

The title was The Morphing Architecture: Runtime Evolution of Distribute Applications. The abstract is too long to be bothered reciting here. Succinctly, as best I remember it, it could be:

If you have distributed applications (components owned by multiple organisations) that run 24×7, and you need to upgrade behaviour, how the hell do you sequence the live upgrade?

Like most PhDs, it is a project of theoretical usefulness, but not significantly close to any commercial interests so that some large company doesn’t solve all your interesting problems before you get around to writing a 200 page thesis.

In 220+ pages, the only interesting parts (to me now) are from my Acknowledgments section:

As [my parent's] eldest of two sons, I am that person in each family who is the “first experiment in parenting.”

The Acknowledgements section ended with this:

And finally [thanks]…
To all the people who ever came up to me…
    Asked me how my thesis was going…
        Laughed hideously…
            And ran off.

Ah, memories.

If you are unlucky enough to be one of those speakers, then I have pity for you.

I should know, I’m one of them, and I have pity for me.

So, I thought I should give a completely unbiased opinion about which of the five sessions you should attend, and which you should avoid like the plague.

Rails Full Text Search with Ferret

By Jens Krämer.

Jens is a German, so this conference is a home game for him. The room will be filled with local Germans all wearing their home strip, and will all be chanting and cheering in German throughout. I watched World Cup 2006 on the telly – that’s what they did then, and Jens’ talk will be no different I’m sure. You can’t learn anything with other people chanting and carrying on like its a football/soccer match.

Screenscraping as a Tool for Changing the (Legacy) World

By Jesper Rønn-Jensen and Mads Buus Westmark.

Jesper and Mads are Danes, from Denmark. A small European country who’s royal crown price recently married an Australian girl. Her father, Dr Donaldson, was my Calculus lecture in 2nd year university. He yelled at me once for talking in class. Whilst not directly Jesper and Mads’ fault, its something to keep in mind.

ActiveRecord and Service Data Objects: Adding New Data Models Beneath Your Rails Apps

By Doug Tidwell from IBM.

IBM is a large country off the coast of all tax-paying countries. Most likely in the Pacific Ocean, as its probably big enough for IBM. Whilst the session talk description is enterprise gobble-de-gook, it probably would be interesting, but I’ll summarise it for you: write specs for your underlying data layer and how they map to the #find and #save methods of ActiveRecord, and bob’s yer uncle.

3rd Partying Issues and Solutions

By Ryan Garver, ELC “Diamond Sponsor” Technologies.

There are three diamond sponsors for RailsConf – ThoughtWorks, Sun Microsystems and ELC. Diamond sponsors are a good thing. Sponsoring things is a good thing. I hope Dr Nic Academy will sponsor things in the future. I’ll talk to the owner about it.

Meta-Magic in Rails: Become a Master Magician

By Dr Nic Williams.

Dr Nic is Australian, so he has a funny slang accent that can be quite awkward to understand, especially when he starts talking very fast. Australia was cheated in World Cup 2006 by Italy who, with 10 seconds left in their round 2 map, dived in the box, got a penalty kick, scored, won the game and went on to win the World Cup. So, logically, if Australia hadn’t been cheated, we’d have won the World Cup instead.

Thusly reenacted here on YouTube:

Summary

11.35am on Tuesday might be a good time to grab a coffee, and talk to Chad Fowler about the shame of putting 5 awesome speakers on at the same time as each other.