I'm speechless. Thanks, Eric.

Topic: Improving your Code with Objects and Aspects
Speaker: Chris Richardson
Agenda: Snacking and mingling from 6:30 to 7, presentation from 7 to 8:30
Location: Google Inc., Tunis Conference Room (Bldg. 43)

Referring to this ActiveRecord example:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base  
   belongs_to :company  
end

class Company < ActiveRecord::Base  
   has_many :people  
end

Gavin says:

At this point, most developers are thinking um, ok, so how the hell am I supposed to know what attributes a Company has by looking at my code? And how can my IDE auto-complete them? Of course, the Rails folks have a quick answer to this question Oh, just fire up your database client and look in the database!. Then, assuming that you know ActiveRecord's automagic capitalization and pluralization rules perfectly, you will be able to guess the names of the attributes of your own Company class, and type them in manually.

Somehow, excitement about the Ruby language has warped their perceptions to such an extent that these people actually believe that this is a good thing!

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Depending on the context, you can almost always replace "Why reinvent the wheel?" with "Please don't compete with me," or "Please don't make me learn something new." Either way, the opponent doesn't have a real argument against building something newer and better, but they also don't want to admit their unhealthy motivations for trying to stop you.

More seeds, more blooms, I say. Don't build houses on kitchen sinks. Reinvent away. Most of our current technology sucks, and even if it didn't, who am I to try and stop you?

In Google Reader, I select the entry I want to twitter and then hit Shift+T. Treader pops up a prompt pre-filled with the entry name and link.

I just edit the twitter to my liking, and hit OK. Treader posts it in the background using Twitter's API. I never have to leave Google Reader.

To try it for yourself:

1. Install Greasemonkey if you haven't already. Greasemonkey requires Firefox.
2. Install Treader.
3. Reload Google Reader, select an entry you want to share, and then hit Shift+T. It will ask you to log into Twitter the first time through.

Thanks to Mihai for helping me work out the kinks.

Twitter is still down for upgrades. It was only supposed to be down for 2.5 hours at midnight.

OMFG! Reader has search!

With well over 400 feeds, keeping up with Google Reader could literally be a full time job.

The iPod Touch looks fun, but I think the new iPod Nano fits us best.

Finally making headway on Guice's introspection API. Get ready for some awesome tools.

Is TechCrunch turning into Valleywag?

I rewrote the Guice home page.

Can't wait to see what Twitter has in store for us.