Joe Fiorini will be presenting on modeling and writing RESTful web services using Ruby on Rails. This is a talk he will be giving at Windy City Rails on Sept. 20th. The abstract is below:

Come with me on a trip to the past: to a day when all we had was the basic HTTP protocol. We'll reminisce about HTTP methods, URIs, and HTTP headers. We've all relied on HTTP in one way or another, now let's find out how we can make it work to our advantage, in a very simple, easy-to-use way. This session goes into detail about what REST is, how to model and subsequently write RESTful web services, and how to consume them in various languages (focus on C# and Ruby). Together, we'll go Back to the Future.

If anyone cannot make it due to the location, please email me (Joe Fiorini) and let me know!

What is the deal with all of these new languages surfacing? Why should you spend the time to learn a language when it isn't in your job description? What benefit do you get by investing in something that might take off, versus something that is tried and true? What are our mainstream languages currently lacking? This is where F# and IronRuby come into play.

From currying, passing code around as data, mathematical-based algorithms that make concurrency a breeze, to features such as message passing, IronRuby and F# give you two new ways of thinking about algorithms. In this talk, Amanda and Joe will walk you through the mental differences that F# and IronRuby bring to the traditional developer. They will show you how, by spending time in either or both languages, you will change the way you think and improve the way you solve problems in any language.
What's your next language going to be?

Amanda Laucher is a consultant for The Sophic Group and has been architecting and developing solutions for the past 8 years. She has recently been focusing on coaching agile principals at a large corporation in Columbus. As a recent language geek, she has become interested in F# and functional programming and how it can make .NET applications better.

Joe is a father, speaker, author and developer. Before helping found EdgeCase, LLC, Joe was a developer with ThoughtWorks and spent much of his time working with large J2EE and .NET systems for Fortune 500 companies. He has spent his career as a developer, project manager, and everything in between. Joe is a passionate member of the open source community. He co-founded the Columbus Ruby Brigade and helped organize the Chicago Area Ruby Users Group. His passions are Agile Development in the Enterprise, Ruby, and demonstrating to the Fortune 500 the elegance and power of this incredible language.