Tutorial: Building GUIs for Ruby programs with Glade
March 2nd, 2007
Glade has become a relatively popular tool for developing user interfaces for GTK+. The cool thing about Glade is the fact that it generates the interface in an XML dialect that can be imported by several programming languages, including C/C++, Python, Mono and Ruby among others.
A programmer can design an interface in Glade, and specify signals (events) for each of the components in the graphical user interface. Using tools like ‘ruby-glade-create-template’, one can have the method signatures generated automatically, then just fill in the blanks and end up with pretty nifty applications. Pretty neat, huh?
The problem? Finding the necessary information to get started.
In this tutorial we will use Ruby and Glade in order to generate a simple, but graphical, ‘Hello World!’ program. I’m assuming you have Glade 3 installed on your system and all the necessary libraries (libglade, et al).
When outsourcing becomes insulting…
February 20th, 2007
By the end of September 2006, my career as a student was coming to an end and the search for a job was inevitable.
I went to my college’s ‘Job Fair’ armed with a kickass resumé and over three years of part-time experience under my belt. Landing subsequent interviews and, eventually, job offers wasn’t too much of a problem because my research experience and part-time jobs really worked in my favor. I did my fair share of research about the companies that would be visiting us. Among the top contenders featured: IBM, HP, Microsoft, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs and Allstate.
One of the companies that caught my attention was Cascades Technologies (CTi): a Virginia-based company that was moving part of their development to Puerto Rico. Read the rest of this entry »

