Here's the challenge – 2 weeks to build a robust streaming Twitter application in Ruby on Rails with a website and some basic configuration features.
Alex and I are pretty experienced in this with Python and Django now – 12 months together as a primarily Python / Django shop, then he has a lot more experience prior to that, while I was an "on again / off again" Google App Engine hacker and learnt a little bit about it.
We've launched several applications this year, including our Chirp Day hack, Twendly, Tribalytic, Distlr and Trunk.ly all of which use Python / Django and integrate with Twitter.
Sum knowledge of Ruby and Rails? Nothing. We've not downloaded it, we've not read the code, neither of us have ever used it before. It will be an interesting two weeks.
We need to:
- Install and get up and running with the basic syntax and the Ruby / Rails way.
- Deploy a basic app and understand how that process works with Rails.
- Get the testing frameworks hooked up.
- Find a good open source Twitter library for Rails, then almost certainly add what's needed to make it production robust.
- Connect and stream the data into MySQL.
- Build some basic configuration options and a front end to manage that.
Probably a good start…
Wish us luck, here we go!
