Category: Awesome Coders

Thor Project Opens Up, Building the Cloud Foundry Ecosystem with the Community

The Iron Foundry Team are big advocates of open source software. We write code across all sorts of languages, just like many of the development shops out there do. Sometimes we’re heavy on the .NET, other times we’re all up in some Java, Ruby on Rails, spooling up a Node.js Application or something else. So keeping with our love of open source and our polyglot nature we’ve created the Thor Project with three distinct apps.

Before jumping into the applications though, a little context for what and where Thor is in the grand scheme of things. We need to roll back to the Cloud Foundry Project to get into that. The Cloud Foundry Project is an open source project built around software for PaaS (Platform as a Service) which can be used to build your own PaaS internally or externally, in a cloud provider or directly on hardware. It’s your choice how, when and where you want to use it. For more context on PaaS check out my previous entry “The Confusions of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS“.

Thor Project

Cocoa for OS-X

Thor Odinson
Thor Odinson, God of Thunder

You know who Thor is right? He’s this mythic Norse God, also known as the God of Thunder. Since we’re all about bringing the hamma we welcomed Thor into our team’s stable of applications. So starting immediately we’ve released Thor into the realms for contributions and fighting the good open source software battle! If you’d like to join the effort, check out the github project and feel free to join us!

Technically, what is the Thor Application? This is a Cocoa Application built for OS-X that is used for managing, deploying and publishing applications to Cloud Foundry enabled and or Iron Foundry extended PaaS Environments.

.NET for Windows 7

The .NET Metro version of the Thor Application is also released via github with a provided installer. We’ve almost taken the same path, except of course for the very different UX and UI queues with Windows 7 and the Metro UX design guidelines.

WinRT for Windows 8

I wasn’t really sure what to call this version. Is it Metro or WinRT or Windows 8 or something else? Anyway, there is a project, it is albeit empty at this point, but it is the project where the Windows 8 version of Thor will go! For now get the Windows 7 version and install it on Windows 8, it won’t have touch interface support and things, but should work just like a regular application on Windows 8.

The Code

To get started with these, generally you’d just clone the repo and do a build, then get started checking out the code. There is one catch, for the OS-X version you’ll want to pull down the sub-modules with the following command.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
git clone git@github.com:YourForkHere/Thor.git
git submodule update –init –recursive
[/sourcecode]

Once you do that in XCode just make sure to then select the right project as the starting build project.

…then when the application is launched…

Thor Running in OS-X
Thor Running in OS-X

I’ll have more in the coming days and weeks about Thor & Iron Foundry. For now, check out the blog entry on the Iron Foundry Blog and subscribe there for more information.

Subbu Allamaraju Presenting “ql.io – Consuming HTTP APIs at Scale” @ #NodePDX

This is the twelth in a series of posts about the individual speakers lined up for…

Subbu Allamaraju
Subbu Allamaraju

Subbu Allamaraju lives somewhere easy of Seattle, and is heading south in some way to come present at Node PDX!  Subbu has been working with HTTP based APIs for over four years, first at Yahoo! and now at eBay. As an architect and the creator of ql.io at eBay, he is responsible for improving the way HTTP is consumed by apps and pave way for near-real-time and conversational end user experiences. He was also one of the key drivers in adopting node.js at Yahoo.

Subbu will present…

Node.js is a great platform for building I/O bound apps. At eBay, my team applied node.js to solve a very common chore – how to get data from server-side HTTP APIs (or “web services”) quickly. ql.io is a result of this work.

ql.io consists of two parts:

  • A SQL + JSON inspired DSL for HTTP
  • A runtime that you can can either deploy as an HTTP gateway or use as a JS API for node.js based apps.

In this talk, I will show how you can use ql.io, the agility and performance gains that ql.io can bring in, and then take a deep dive into some of the design choices we made under the hood.

If you’d like to come and check out this presentation and the other kick ass presentations lined up, get involved in some coding, hear what Node.js is all about, or just hang out please RSVP and get the event on your calendar! Besides, what better reason to come visit the amazing city of Portland, Oregon than to come hack some node.js and chill for the weekend!

Scott Koon Presenting “NODE! Huh! What else is it good for?” @ #NodePDX

This is the eleventh in a series of posts about the individual speakers lined up for…

Scott Koon's Morning Expression Coming Into Work
Scott Koon's Morning Expression Coming Into Work

Scott Koon and I have worked facing each other for the last several months, hacking away at code. He’s been my go to guy for JavaScript Questions. Well now he’s decided to come down to Portland and give us a talk about Node.js. I’m sure along with his presentation he’ll bring some of his awesome snark too, so watch out! Scott describes his presentation as:

Everyone talks about Node.js in terms of non-blocking I/O and creating a web service or web site using JavaScript. But there is more to Node.js than just Sockets, ports, and protocols. I’ll explore some of the non-web exclusive uses of Node.js. Node can be a code compiler, an FTP server, a continuous integration server, a mail server, a deployment server, or an IRC server. Node can provide system reports, build and package your projects, and parse ePub books.

Herding Code
Herding Code

Scott has been working with JavaScript for a long time. He co-authored a book called “Professional JavaScript Frameworks” published by Wrox press. He’s also a familiar voice on the podcast Herding Code.

If you’d like to come and check out this presentation and the other kick ass presentations lined up, get involved in some coding, hear what Node.js is all about, or just hang out please RSVP and get the event on your calendar! Besides, what better reason to come visit the amazing city of Portland, Oregon than to come hack some node.js and chill for the weekend!

Daniel Erickson Presenting “Geddy – A better framework for building apps on node” @ #NodePDX

This is the ninth in a series of posts about the individual speakers lined up for…

Daniel Erickson
Daniel Erickson

Daniel Erickson will be coming to join us from San Francisco. Even though he’s no stranger to Portland, having lived here for many years.  These days Daniel is a Senior JavaScript Engineer at Yammer.com in San Francisco. He’s been working with Node.js since the 0.1.x days, and has built or helped out with a number of services including Storify.com, Geekli.st, and of course all the Yammer node services. Check him out on twitter to learn more.

Daniels presentation is described as:
Many frameworks have been created to allow you to build apps on Node.js – Express, Matador, and Flatiron to name a few. But none of these frameworks are built with development velocity, backwards compatibility, and speed. This is where Geddy steps in. Geddy is a framework built and battle tested by the JS team at Yammer. It’s currently running our upload service. During this talk I’ll walk you through building a basic web app with geddy, and show you how we used it to build a prototype mobile site for Yammer in less than 12 hours.
Many frameworks have been created to allow you to build apps on Node.js – Express, Matador, and Flatiron to name a few. But none of these frameworks are built with development velocity, backwards compatibility, and speed. This is where Geddy steps in. Geddy is a framework built and battle tested by the JS team at Yammer. It’s currently running our upload service. During this talk I’ll walk you through building a basic web app with geddy, and show you how we used it to build a prototype mobile site for Yammer in less than 12 hours.
If you’d like to come and check out Daniel’s Presentation and the other kick ass presentations lined up, get involved in some coding, hear what Node.js is all about, or just hang out please RSVP and get the event on your calendar! Besides, what better reason to come visit the amazing city of Portland, Oregon than to come hack some node.js and chill for the weekend!

Kav Latiolais Presenting “Better Together: Building Scalable Real Time Collaborative Apps with Node.js” @ #NodePDX

This is the eigth in a series of posts about the individual speakers lined up for…

Kav in some crazy Seattle snow!!
Kav in some crazy Seattle snow!!

Kav is coming down from Seattle to present “Better Together: Building Scalable Real Time Collaborative Apps with Node.js”. Here’s his description of the presentation:

If you’re not using node to build collaborative real time applications you might as well be using rails. In this talk we’ll discuss patterns and pitfalls of synchronous node apps. We’ll roll up our sleeves and dig into some code demonstrating patterns that can help you get started building highly interactive applications that sync real time state with Node.js, Socket.io, and Backbone.js. You will leave this talk with insight on how to build synchronous experiences into your applications and avoid some of the pitfalls we’ve suffered.

Kav Latiolais is a principal and co-founder at Liffft in Seattle and has been developing collaborative Node.js applications for the past year with Giant Thinkwell. He once built a horse racing app in 30 minutes on a bet. Before starting his love affair with Node.JS, Socket.IO, and CoffeeScript Kav was a Program Manager at Microsoft tasked with designing Visual Studio. Don’t tell his old coworkers he exclusively uses TextMate on his Air.

If you’d like to come and check out Kav’s Presentation and the other amazing presentations lined up, get involved in some coding, hear what Node.js is all about, or just hang out please RSVP and get the event on your calendar! Besides, what better reason to come visit the amazing city of Portland, Oregon than to come hack some node.js and chill for the weekend!