Things We Love: Ruby and Sushi

Photo by Zoe Shuttleworth.

The other day, we got to thinking about how we came to know and love the Ruby language.

Like most Rails developers, we came from the land of PHP — a calm, comforting land where things seemed to work as they should (for the most part). We were content, feeling our code was efficient and effective… until one day, we met Ruby on Rails. And everything changed. It was like falling in love all over again (don’t mention that to our spouses). It was Rails that first taught us about Ruby and our “Ruby romance” continues to blossom as we learn more capabilities of the language.

One of the latest and greatest Ruby trends we’ve been working with is MacRuby. If Rails is “Web Development that doesn’t hurt,” MacRuby would be “App Development that doesn’t hurt.” Since the early days of iOS development, we have yearned for a more Ruby-like way to develop native iOS Apps. Though MacRuby is still not available for iOS, we can use MacRuby to develop native OS X apps. So naturally, we began developing a simple application to meet a simple need.

Meet Image Sushi, our first native OS X app developed in MacRuby and available in the Mac App Store. Image Sushi is extremely simple, performing the one and only task of converting image files into Base64 data. This is extremely useful in web development as it reduces the number of HTTP requests per page (read up on the practice here).

And so, our Ruby romance continues. The great thing about Ruby is that it’s fostered by a community committed to collaboration and improvement. Ruby always keeps us on our toes. And those are key elements in any romance!