Rails’ Achilles’ heel

There is one weakness that Rails has that is very close to making me give up on Rails all-together. Most of my projects are very large applications that often require me to have a separate admin application. By the way, yes, I’ve heard the merge the admin and front-end argument before, and as most non-stubborn developers know, that’s not always the best way to handle it when thinking of our users.

To continue, this is the one thing that Django has gotten right and no one has fixed in Rails. Django has you create projects which have separate applications. That is, they divide each section of an application into its own folder, containing the models, templates, and views.

So why can’t Rails do that?

If Rails were to do this, Rails programmers wouldn’t have to face the issues they face every day when growing an app. For example, deciding whether or not to branch out one level of an app’s functionality into its own Rails application. But as we know, whenever you try to do that, you start facing incredibly annoying issues, like having to manage the sharing of models, making sure your sessions are properly and securely shared between applications, managing yet another instance of a Rails application, and managing the look and feel of your application by having copies of layouts and views across different apps.

There’s also the issue of distributing a Rails application. Take Beast for example. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if all you had to do to get Beast working on your application is script/apps install beast?

To my knowledge, no one has successfully figured the right way to organize a Rails application when these issues are met. I say this because when you Google to see what others are doing to handle these organizational tasks, you always get the same results: people posting on their blogs about how they’re struggling with these issues.

It is only Rails and Ruby’s incredible strengths on other grounds that keeps Rails strong, but if it weren’t for those, I’d be jumping on the Django train immediately.

So I take us back to these fantastic posts from John W. Long and wish to reignite the talk about taking “a page from the Django Playbook” so I can actually compare Django vs. Rails and not continue feeling like Rails is coming up short on the scaling and modularity side.

I know there are plenty of arguments against this, but that’s the reason for this post. To get the arguments going.

The streak is over, and this is not “I Dream of Football”

So the FIU streak is over and we are now again under .500 overall, but, over .500 in the Sun Belt, which is fine by me. It’s up to FIU now to really step up, play consistent, and do amazing this weekend if they want to shock the college football world. It is great to know, however, that no matter what happens, this is a 200% improvement over last year, even if we don’t get another win.

My regulars will wonder, however, when did this become a football blog? It seems that that’s been a lot of what’s on my mind lately. Unfortunately, not enough innovative codings and such have popped into my head lately as I’m spending most of my time working out all the kinks in the FIUSM.com workflow.

I missed Rails Rumble, which I’m rather disappointed about, but I had nothing to work with anyways, nor was I too motivated this year, so it’s all right.

I do promise I’ll try more to bring code back into the blog, even though I haven’t done that in almost a year now. I am planning, though, to merge my Tumblr and Blog and run a little John Gruber type action here so I have a fantastic middle ground between blogging and tumbling.

So yet again, stay tuned.

Note to self: these “stay tuned” blog posts are getting beyond old.

A 2-win streak on the road; and it won’t stop now

I think last night’s 42-10 win against North Texas and FIU’s overall performance as a baby FBS team is a sign of a foundation being built, and right now the only way to go now is up.  Phase 1 of the stadium is completed and it is opened for play, the football team is stronger than its ever been, and the school spirit is really starting to show, both in school and out.  No longer is it embarrassing for you to be a Golden Panthers fan; now its the way to be.

Hosting a small event at my home to watch an away game on TV felt great.  Sure it wasn’t carried by any of the big networks and I had to pay for it, but it was still great to watch our Golden Panthers play on TV, something that is not often the case unless its Sportscenter with a replay of the UM/FIU fight.

So all I really have to say about everything is this: keep going FIU; get us a couple more wins, show the world how serious we are about our program and school spirit, and have the fan base build itself, don’t try to force it upon FIU.  If the program keeps going this way, it will happen the right way, the way it’s supposed to happen.

And now, it’s waiting until Middle Tennessee at home.

FIU’s stadium opener was a success

FIU gave USF quite the scare.  A 17-9 loss is not something to be completely ashamed of, although I will say that I do think FIU had this game had the made offense made a couple less mistakes and had a little more finesse, we definitely would’ve had a win.  FIU did show some of the best defense they’ve ever had, though; more than certainly the best defense they’ve had in their life in the FBS. Holding a #12-ranked team back from a touchdown twice from the 1-yard line is not an easy task.

The experience at the new stadium was absolutely great. It truly felt like FIU will reach the true college game day experience if they just keep playing harder, put a couple of Ws in their record, and make some quality fans come to the games, something I think we desperately need after some fans’ failure to show sportsmanship.

You can read more about the game experience in two great columns published at FIUSM.com; one by Chris Towers and one by Andrew Julian. Both are great commentaries and both are pretty good reflections of my post-game thoughts. Also, make sure to check out photos taken by the photo team at FIU Student Media (one of the photographers including myself).

‘Til the next game, I’m plenty excited and look forward to seeing the Golden Panthers really perform this year.

P.S.: Pete, what was your USF/FIU prediction again?

Being an FIU student is a big deal

Going to Gainesville to visit UF last weekend was one hell of an experience.  It’s an absolutely fantastic campus, the town is great, and it’s awesome to have met so many people who are passionate about what they’re doing there.  I had a small fear that once I left, I’d miss it and feel like I may have preferred going to UF over FIU. That is not what happened, however.  My trip helped me appreciate being a Golden Panther more than ever.

FIU has a culture that is unmatched by any other university I’ve ever visited before. I think its fantastic to hear six different languages spoken while walking from one class to the other; it’s something I think I, and many other people, have taken for granted.  I don’t think there is any other learning environment in the U.S. that can provide for you the exposure to different cultures and different types of people like FIU offers.

It’s also great to be a part of growth. UF has already established itself as a top school. It’s nationally recognized, it’s school pride and spirit goes unmatched, and I can only imagine what it’s like to be a part of the large and proud Gator Nation. However, at FIU, everybody has the opportunity to become a significant part of FIU’s growth and really be a defining part of its expanding history.

For example, I am honored to be the first Online Director for FIU Student Media’s online initiative, FIUSM.com. The website will be something that will last for decades to come, as long as the Internet exists (which we know is not going away anytime soon); and it’s truly great to be one of the project’s pioneers, along with all the hard working editors who are trying to make something so significant in Student Media’s history a success.

Being a part of so many other significant things going on at FIU is fantastic too. I’ll be in the media booth for the first ever home game at the growing FIU Stadium that will become a symbol of the Golden Panther pride. I’ll be able to see a beautiful new museum in Miami and a symbol of FIU’s artistic culture open in my own backyard. I’ll see the establishment and growth of an already great institution that I am confident will gain some serious national spotlight in only a few years time.

I would not elect to be anywhere else other than FIU right now. I don’t care if you were to offer me a full ride at MIT, CMU, OSU, UF, etc. I’d rather be working here, at home, to be a part of growing the university that has given me so much opportunity to strive and make a serious mark. It’s a great time to be an FIU student, and I couldn’t be happier.

Let’s try this again…

So I’m going to try this “blogging” thing once more and see if I can make it work.  I will keep my Tumblr around for those small things that I like to post. I’ll probably keep a format similar to John Gruber where I’ll have random links and tidbits, but also save some room for the occasional lengthy blog post regarding stuff like Rails, FIUSM.com, and more.

So, hope you enjoy my 9th? 10th? attempt at making a blog that I’ll constantly update (or at least enjoy watching me fail).

Yes, I have an iPhone 3G

After the best* 4½ hour wait in line I’ve ever had, I finally got myself the iPhone 3G after a disappointing launch date (alarm clocks = FAIL).

So far, the experience has been nothing out of this world. All it is is the original iPhone but with 3G in certain areas and GPS that I still have yet to see working.

The 3G has actually been extremely impressive. I installed the Pandora Radio app and was able to get great quality music playing on the iPhone via the 3G network while I was driving in my car. Good-bye FM radio, forget you satellite, and HD radio, you’re going to have to wait a little longer before you get in my car because iPhone has got you beat.

GPS has been a huge disappointment. The weather wasn’t all that great yesterday but it still wasn’t horrendous. It took me an hour before I could even get a glimpse of what the GPS blue dot looks like in Google Maps and I could never even get it to move like in the demos.

I wanted the iPhone 3G to be a replacement for an actual GPS nav system for my car but if that’s the kind of quality it gives me during a cloudy day, I definitely don’t want to be dependent on that phone if I ever get lost for real and desperately need to find my way back.

Tomorrow I will try GPS again with better weather and see if it really is a replacement for a car GPS nav system, but until then, iPhone 3G, you’re on notice.

*This was the only 4½ hour wait I’ve ever had in a line.

FOWA Miami 2008

FOWA has been an absolute blast from the start of registration to the end of the Scrapblog party. I had the privilege to speaking to guys like Blaine Cook (Twitter), Cal Henderson (Flickr), Larry Masters (CakePHP), and the list goes on.

The sessions were fantastic, from Cal’s hilarious and extremely interesting Flickr presentation to Gary Vaynerchuk’s live taping of Wine Library TV. All the speakers did tremendous jobs. Dan Rubin’s workshop on Interface Design for Web Apps was also most interesting.

Barcamp Miami was a really productive and successful event put together by no other than Alex de Carvalho, Brian Breslin, Nick Dominguez, and Chris Saylor. Speaking of Chris, he and the rest of the TastyPlanner team (Bruno Miranda and Josh Owens) put together a really great presentation about their RailsRumble win that got everyone talking and snagging TastyPlanner buttons (including Kevin Rose who got two). Also, look out for the Web 2.0 Show, who will be releasing interviews with some of the speakers in upcoming podcasts.

No one could turn away from Larry’s ongoing quest to convince Blaine that Rails doesn’t scale and that addons.mozilla.org would never survive if it was using Rails (which I completely disagree with, but that’s a different conversation).

Mad props to Ryan Carson and the rest of the Carsonified team for putting together a great event; notably Mel Kirk and Elliot Jay Stocks whom you could see working hard all throughout.