Competing in Rails Day 2006

Posted on June 16, 2006 by dreadpiratepj

In just over three hours, I will be competing in Rails Day 2006. It’s a coding competition, where you are only allowed to use Ruby on Rails to create a full web app in 24 hours.

I have a thermos full of hot coffee, with milk and sweetener already added – can’t waste time on the little stuff! :-) I also have juice, water, and ready-to-eat snacks and food in the fridge (choc chip cookies, Subway salads and subs, and leftovers from yesterday.)

As (bad? good?) luck would have it, my customer was short on funds this week. So I didn’t have work, but therefore had the whole week to get ready for Rails Day. I’ve been practicing by writing lots of small apps, learning to use more of Rails and the various plugins available.

I am competing just to see what I’ve learned in the last year. Whatever problems I encounter will be an indication of what I need to concentrate on in my self-education in the months ahead. Hopefully I’ll do a good enough job to win a prize or two, and I’ll work my butt of to achieve that.

Whatever the outcome, I also thought I could document how I made my web app in a series of screencasts/vidcasts. I’m going to be sans work for a few weeks until my customer can get some revenue (two of their customers didn’t pay them in May, so they are short on funds. If things don’t change by July 1st, it’s sayonara Rails project in PR, hello USA traveling consultant.) So I actually will have time to make a few vidcasts about how I implement my app.

Either way, win or lose, this is going to get me some exposure. I doubt I’ll get everything I have planned implemented in 24 hours. But I believe I can get 70% done in that time. After Rails Day, I’ll keep working on and improving the app, whether I win anything or not. I’m writing something I’ve wanted to see implemented since as far as I’ve used email, oh 20-odd years ago. Oh yeah, it’s an email app. You’ll see. :-)

I’m gonna catch a few winks, and then I’ll get up at 11 p.m. to get my source code repository credentials. Talk to you all later.

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About dreadpiratepj

I have been goofing around with computers since May 1978, when I was about seven years old. For the past decade, I've even managed to have people pay me for this! Suckers! :-)
This entry was posted in hacks, open.source, rails, railsday, ruby, software.development. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Competing in Rails Day 2006

  1. Ken Nelson says:
    June 16, 2006 at 11:56 pm

    Good luck, PJ. I’ll keep Ruby on Skids as my own contribution. :)

    Looking forward to the updates.

    –Ken–

  2. Pingback: Rails and Skids at ten billion butterfly sneezes

  3. dreadpiratepj says:
    June 17, 2006 at 1:45 am

    Thanks Ken!

    And now that you mention it, I was thinking of naming my Rails tutorial vidcast, “On the Skids with Rails”, and giving you credit for the inspiration. :-)

    I’ll comment about my progress on and off during the next 24 hours.

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