Thanks for the comments.

The 4th beta came out just after I wrote this post. I’ve switched to the fourth beta for the next section.

I agree that a more extensive Ruby book is in order. However, I was also happy that there was enough Ruby (now) to get me through the Rails material in the first section.

The purpose of the book is to focus on the Rails framework – not Ruby per se. Several times in the book, Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas and David H. Hansson cite to the Picaxe Book and refer readers to that resource for a more in depth discussion of Ruby. I would also suggest that folks check out the Metaprogramming in Ruby book from the Prag Prog.

Not sure which version of the book you were going through. As of now, there have been 4 beta revisions of the book. The big change in 4th version, which is not that big of a change, the new key word was added. So..when you create a rails app:

rails new myappname. It should also be pointed out that

One other thing, folks probably want to stick with Ruby 1.8.7. I don’t believe the latest beta works with Ruby 1.9.1, but reports are, it works with 1.9.2. Per the release notes, there are still bugs and stability issues. Hence – sticking with 1.8.7 is probably a good idea.

I admit that very occasionally, I would be so impressed with a resume that I would scan, or maybe even read, the cover letter. But if I was that impressed with the resume, I would schedule a phone screen whether or not a cover letter existed. Same with the objective. Who reads those? “To gain a position at a responsible company that offers challenging work blah blah blah”. If I’ve read one, I’ve read them all.

It’s my opinion that spending the time and energy to write a cover letter is a waste. In my case, I was just too busy to read them and learned early enough that I would get what I needed from the person during the phone screen. A cover letter was never the difference between a follow-up call and the circular file.

As a job applicant, I quit writing cover letters a long time ago, and it never stopped me from getting calls on the jobs I was really interested in. This may not be the case for those with less experience, but I wonder what the percentage is of hiring managers that actually take the time to read them? Obviously you do, so I won’t make the blanket statement that “nobody reads them”, but I would venture to guess that the absence of a cover letter on an intriguing resume wouldn’t prevent you from taking the next step?

Corey

My question is: would an ‘out of browser’ Silverlight app work? I saw the demo of playing a Flash chess game.

Just Chrome… dunno, sorta not enough… Android + Chrome == interesting!