Archive for March, 2006

Working at IBM

Antonio Cangiano March 31st, 2006

The last three weeks have been very exciting and busy for me; a time of immense change and new beginnings, in a beautiful country where I have the wonderful opportunity and chance to work for the IBM Toronto Software Lab. The lab environment is very stimulating with many smart people who are ready to help each other out, and it is definitely the best place I’ve ever worked in.

I am well aware that there are not many Ruby jobs out there at the moment, so I consider myself lucky as I work with Ruby and Ruby on Rails on a daily basis at IBM.

Speaking of Rails, I am sure many of you know David Heinemeier Hansson has recently announced the release of Rails 1.1.
This release introduces many new features and additions, including a Ruby to Javascript compiler. To upgrade Rails, you can just use the command:

gem update Rails –include-dependencies

Meanwhile for those of you using Windows, Curt Hibbs has also released the RC1 of his One Click Installer.

While I am at it, I want to clarify that: all the opinions expressed in this blog are my own personal opinions and are not endorsed by, nor do they represent the opinions of my employer or any of its affiliates.

self.move_to(Canada)

Antonio Cangiano March 8th, 2006

During the last few weeks I wanted to talk about several things in this blog, some related to coding tecniques, some more personal, but I didn’t have much time to do so. With the exception of this project and some collaborative work on a Ruby book, I didn’t even have much time to code or be at the computer at all.

Nevertheless it has been a very exciting period, stressful but rich in hopes and challenges. In fact I’ve been so busy because on Friday I am finally moving to Canada, in the Toronto Area, where I will work for a great IT company. This is very exciting. The only weak note is that I had to get rid of my wide collection of IT books. The few ones that I’ll be able to ship/bring with me are shown in the photo.

Anyways I look forward to living in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, working for one of the most respected companies – where I’m sure I’ll be able to learn a lot (I’ve so much to learn!!) from some of the best minds out there. I know that there are lots of Ruby/Rails related activites and events in the GTA area, and I’m really looking forward to meeting other Rubyists and “Railists”, maybe sipping a good coffee at the Linux Caffe.



Code is waiting to be written and doughnuts to be eaten :)