linuxchix.org.nz

In February I finally decided to do something I always wanted to do with DevChix. I wanted to lead a group project intended for those who wanted to learn and could commit to 2 hours a week. I had 3 volunteers.. then two.. and then one! But thats ok, I know people get busy and other things going on, so no big deal. But cool thing is, even those that left said they learned something. So, my goal was still reached!

The Project

I had this idea in my head for awhile. One thing with lists is, you need to write down something if you want to do it today. We all have todo lists, and there are somethings we want to do every day. You may try to remember them without a list, or maybe you write them out. I thought it would be cool to have a todo list app that will give your list, allow you to check them off, then next day you have the same list. Bonus to have a graph of how many you did each day of the week. I think its motivating to see a graph of my progress.

Getting Started

Its my experience, when I start an app, I add user login and I get hung up on the authentication, tests and stuff and never get to the meat of the app. So I wrote a simple login system with just a username (no password), threw it in the session and wrote some simple methods to check to see if logged in. Later we replaced it with Devise with not much trouble at all.

What we learned

• git, making branches, push and pull
• erb and haml
• grid 960
• HighCharts a javascript graphing library
  devise, we added a whitelist so we can have a beta with only certain email addresses allowed to sign up.

• publishing with heroku
• rails of course

Challenges

Summer got busy, including a cross country move for me and new job! We still managed to meet about every 2 weeks. We used github for our code. We put our tasks in Pivotal Tracker and that worked fine. We used Github wiki to record meeting notes, what happened since last meeting and who is doing what for the next week. We’ve been able to meet weekly the past month or so as the summer is winding down.

Whats next?

We are deploying the app to DevChix for beta testing. From there, not sure.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference took place again this year in San Francisco, kicking off with the Steve Jobs keynote.

The iPhone 4 announcement came as no surprise to any Gizmodo readers, but for most developers, this didn’t matter: the conference highlights typically come AFTER the keynote anyway.  And we were rewarded with a new XCode, Safari 5, and other goodies that I can’t talk about because the rest is under NDA!

However, there is lots to show and see outside the NDA, including some of the amazing women developers.  So come along and get a taste of the keynote line, the structure of our days, the parties, and a peek at some of the wonderful attendees who make WWDC such a fun and educational event:

Lastly, if you are a certified Apple developer and want to see the sessions you missed, Apple has released them for FREE to all registered developers!