Ruby Sig: How To Design A Domain Specific Language
Google engEDU
1 hr 3 min – Oct 5, 2006

Google Tech Talks
October 5, 2006

David Pollak has been developing commercial software for 28 years. He founded Athena Design and wrote Mesa, the first real-time spreadsheet. David wrote Integer, the first online, collaborative spreadsheet. Since 2000, David has been developing domain specific languages for security and general web development.

ABSTRACT
David will describe a framework for developing DSLs which includes:

* Identifying the constituents in a development project;
* Determining the costs and benefits of a DSL for a particular constituency vs. hand-coding functionality for that constituency based on interviews and specs;
* Identifying the ‘thought leader’ in a given constituency and interviewing him or her to determine the semantics of the domain;
* Determining syntax of the DSL;
* Mocking up the DSL and ‘test driving’ it with the thought leader;
* Finding appropriate integration points for the DSL into the application;
* Defining the process by with the Domain Experts will update code in the DSL (e.g., they have a web page where they can change tax calculation rules vs. they make a change to particular Ruby files as part of a development/staging/production cycle.); and
* Iterate over the semantics, syntax, and process to fully integrate Domain Experts into the development process. Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond Test Driven Development: Behaviour Driven Development
Google engEDU
48 min – Mar 17, 2006

Google TechTalks
March 17, 2006

Dave Astels

Dave Astels (co-author of "A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming" and author of Jolt Award winning "Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide") has over 2 decades of experience in the software field, most of that involved with object-oriented technologies and techniques. Dave has been studying, practicing, teaching, evangelising, and coaching XP and Agile Processes since 1998. Dave’s experience ranges from embedded process control systems to consumer products (both consumer electronics and shrinkwrapped software) to energy trading systems. Dave is an independant software consultant specializing in the areas of agile process, programming practices, and object design/architecture. Dave is one of the thought leaders in the area of TDD, and now BDD.

ABSTRACT
Test Driven Development (TDD) has become quite well known. Many developers are getting benefit from the practice. But it is possible that we can get even more value. A new practice is getting attention these days: Behaviour Driven Development (BDD).

BDD removes all vestiges of testing and instead focuses on specifying the behaviour desired in the system being built. This talk will be focus on Ruby and will introduce a new BDD framework: rSpec. The ideas, however, are language independent. Read the rest of this entry »

BillMonk.com
Google engEDU
40 min – Jun 16, 2006

Google TechTalks
June 16, 2006

Gaurav Oberoi & Chuck Groom
Co-Founders, BillMonk.com

ABSTRACT
The web 2.0 bubble inflates as geeks pump out an astonishing number of web-based solutions to daily problems. But a lot of these solutions only appeal to a small niche. What goes into a service that appeals to a broad range of people?

How can it start and grow without a generous helping of capital? The two guys behind BillMonk.com, a service for helping friends with the casual borrowing of money and stuff, will share their views from the trenches. They will share the story of what it took to quit their comfy jobs at Amazon, how a handful of philosophical axioms dictated the entire site design and interface, anthropological observations about the 18-26 year-old demographic with respect to money and computers, and some of the technical challenges they’ve faced. There will be room for discussion about Ruby, Linux, when to open-source parts of your platform, and business lessons for geeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Leveraging Unit Tests As Functional Tests, Load Tests, and Service Monitors
Google engEDU
45 min – Aug 13, 2007

Google Tech Talks
August 13, 2007

ABSTRACT

Frank Cohen, the leading authority on XML, Platforms, Applications and Database (XPAD) optimization will give a TechTalk at Google on the issues confronting software developers, QA technicians, and IT managers to rapidly surface and solve functional and performance problems in service environments.

Frank will demonstrate the new PushToTest TestMaker Version 5 open- source end-to-end service governance and test automation tool. Software developers use PushToTest to turn their unit tests into functional tests in a test automation platform that runs on their development machine. Frank will demonstrate PushToTest’s Wizards and Recorders to automatically build tests and supports a variety of languages, including Java, .NET, Jython, Groovy, PHP, Ruby, and many others. Plus Frank will show how PushToTest Version 5 supports SOA, Web Service, AJAX, and REST services using HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, XML- RPC, and the email protocols.

Frank will show how the platform requires no programming to turns these same functional tests into load tests and service monitors for QA technicians, IT operations managers, and CIOs. PushToTest test run- time load tests and service monitors integrate into Service Registry/ Repository products and database performance optimization and root- cause analysis tools. Read the rest of this entry »

Code Generation With Ruby
Google engEDU
51 min – Aug 3, 2006

Google TechTalks
August 3, 2006

Jack Herrington, the author of Code Generation in Action (Manning, July 2003) , will talk about code generation techniques using Ruby. He will cover both do-it-yourself and off-the-shelf solutions in a conversation about where Ruby is as a tool, and where it’s going. Read the rest of this entry »