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After the friendly fire...

Posted by Declan McGrath on 11 August 2010.

Thanks to all who turned out to make last night a really fun Ruby Ireland meetup! About fifteen of Ireland’s finest Ruby developers made the epic trip to Doyles Bar, near Trinity College, Dublin! With the World Cup out of the way it was time to get back down to the serious business of discussing the latest topics in Rubyland and beyond.

The dropping of the usual presentation slot seemed to be a welcome change, though we didn’t actually make it to the official Ruby Session itself - leaving the music aside to keep talking tech until the end of the night. There was plenty to talk about, not least a robust debate around future of privacy for the Facebook generation and general plans for Ruby to take over the world! The latest releases of RubyMine are striking a positive chord with some R.I. members with the sneak peak version (completey usable) freely downloadable from the RubyMine website. A few tips cropped up for those who prefer not to use a full-on IDE for development. If you just can’t bear to give up your Vi editor then this guide to integrating Vim into your life is essential reading. At the very least check out how ctags let you quickly navigate between functions across files!

With Rails 3 on the horizon, there’s more than a few R.I. folks taking the opportunity to start buildings apps using the next version of Rails, with one or two people combining it nicely with MongoDB to make an impressive solution. The customary Apple vs Android debate reared it’s head - with MeeGo cropping up on a trusty Dell Mini 10 to add a bit of spice to the debate! How cute are the MeeGo characters on the UI and MeeGo website! Cute enough to ensure that there’s one active project in RubyIreland to ensure that Ruby bindings work on MeeGo as it evolves. Just in time for the upcoming MeeGo conference in Dublin in a few months. There was also a few entrepreneurs floating around guarding their ideas closely to their chest - until one or two pints of Guinness prized a few details out of them. Watch this space for more!

Finally, a massive thanks again to our meetup sponsors - Jolt Online Gaming - who underwrote the food bill for the evening! And, as the first meetup since the new site went live, we couldn’t sign off this month without thanking dediserve for generously hosting the RubyIreland website!