Robert Hahn

inspired by integration

I'm always interested in infrastructure that brings people together and facilitates communication. I'm currently exploring social software, markup & scripting languages, and abstract games.

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noted on Thu, 30 Jun 2005

Rails Day Results

So, as I had mentioned a short while ago, I was aiming to participate in Rails Day. And I did. The results came in late last night. And I didn’t win. You know what? That’s just fine with me.

You see, the version that I last uploaded to the server wasn’t the right version. I have no idea what happened, but the files didn’t properly check into svn, so if the app worked at all (I was too chicken to find out), then it wasn’t what I intended to do.

So what was my project? I called it Ritka: Rails TimeKeeping Application; it was a billing/invoicing application for services businesses. Which, now that I see the results, sounds pretty similar to the first place entry.

It’s my intention to keep working on my project and put it up for people to download and run. I believe that I’ve got some great ideas in there, and with a little work create something that’s useful, painless, and eliminates almost all the drudgery from tracking your time to sending out the invoices.

Looking back on the experience, I have to say I learned a few things. Ajax was one of them. Yes, I taught myself how to use Ajax during the competition. That was probably a productivity-killing move. I also should have blocked off more time before the contest to carefully plan out the application, with ‘outs’ in case I was running out of time. Finally, I should have designed a project that would take 20 hours to build — that way, if I crashed hard (which I did), I wouldn’t feel so bad about packing it all in.

Anyway, I had a ton of fun, and learned some valuable lessons in the process. Thanks so much to the Rails Day team for taking the time to organize the competition!

tall ship