Waves

REST is not an architecture, but a set of constraints for an architecture. I like to use the phrase Resource-Oriented Architecture to talk about the specific Web-based architecture that satisfies those constraints. But the main thing to remember ... [More] is that these are constraints for a bandwidth-optimizing object-based distributed computing architecture that is both platform and protocol neutral. In that light, one thing that should be clear is that REST therefore applies to pretty much everything Web developers do these days. [Less]

Lately, in my talks on Waves and how it supports RESTful architectures, I've found I've had to take a step back and talk more about what REST is and why it matters. This is a bit surprising, since REST has been on the buzzword bingo card for years ... [More] now. However, it turns out that most of what has passed for RESTful is really what I have come to call REST-lite. Essentially, REST-lite focused on the verbs of the HTTP protocol and (more or less) ignores ... well, the rest. [Less]

I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be speaking on Waves at GoRuCo in The Big Apple (specifically, Pace University in Lower Manhattan) on May 31st. I love Manhattan (or, at least, I love visiting there) and I really enjoy these smaller conferences. ... [More] I wanted to speak at last year’s GoRuCo but narrowly missed the deadline because I had been completely immersed in getting the first version of Waves out the door. [Less]

The inaugural LA RubyConf was a bit hit. I am proud to have kicked things off as the first speaker, given the line-up that followed, which included cats and dogs living together, flying robots, cloud comedy and a unified theory of hacking.

It is easy to be a cynic. It is easy to say, the hell with it, and give up. But nothing really interesting ever gets done that way. And certainly part of what I love about TED -- and Mindshare and other events like it -- is that it celebrates ... [More] perseverance. Some people don't get that. Was it cheesy as hell when Melissa Etheridge joined Muslim rock star Salman Ahmad, singing ring the bells of change, and everone was literally ringing these little bells? Hell, yeah it was. But when you back it up with an organizational behavior case study on building the Large Hadron Collider or a talk by a guy restoring sight to the blind, well, you know what? [Less]

I grew up in Detroit, but I've got no love for American automakers. I think bailing them out is a waste of money. I want them to die and for Detroit to move on and find an industry who treats them better. Why do I hate them? Because they don't innovate.

I get a number of questions along the lines of, “Why shouldn’t I just use Rails or Merb? How is Waves better than Rails?” and so forth. The thing is, Waves is not “a better Rails” — Rails does a great job for database-driven Web apps and Merb provides a nice target for “Rails 3”. Waves is trying to solve a different problem entirely.

No big news, but I thought someone needed to update the blog, since we have been hard at work hacking Waves. Luckily the commits always tell the truth, which is that there are interesting new features coming out with the (imminent) 0.83 release of Waves.

This is a little bit late, but I wanted to let everybody know that we're now AT&T Interactive. Our work today encompasses everything from "voice recognition":http://speak4it.com/ to social networking. We've recently hired Chris Hughes (not "that ... [More] one":http://is.gd/Nc7, "this one":http://is.gd/gBQr), "Ari Lerner":http://labs.citrusbyte.com/poolparty, and "Eero Saynatkari":http://www.ohloh.net/p/rubinius/contributors/16361677958936, along with many other talented folks. [Less]

You can watch my "RubyConf presentation":http://is.gd/gDpf now, or just "go through the slides":http://www.slideshare.net/dyoder/rubyconf-preso to better understand what we're doing here.