Pow, Rails 3.1 Asset Pipeline, CoffeeScript and More (Changelog Interviews #64)

Adam and Wynn caught up with Sam Stephenson from 37Signals to talk about his his many open source projects and developing Basecamp Mobile.

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Show Notes:

• Nathan Smith, friend of the show, creator of 960.gs, Adapt, Formalize, and featured in Episode 0.3.2


• Sam Stephenson, programmer at 37signals, creator of massive amounts of open source.


• Pow is a zero-config Rack server for Mac OS X.


• Pow supports multiple rubies via RVM.


• Powder is a CLI for Pow.


• Prototype.js is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.


• Sprockets is a Ruby library that preprocesses and concatenates JavaScript source files.


• Stitch stitches your CommonJS modules together for the browser


• ExecJS runs JavaScript code from Ruby.


• Josh Peek, Rubyist and GitHubber.


• Nack - Node.js adapter for Rack


• Sam loves CoffeeScript and hopes to never write JavaScript again.


• Sam debunks the FUD of debugging CoffeeScript. “Command-F is your friend.”


• Jeremy Ashkenas, creator of CoffeeScript ported his Underscore library as a demonstration.


• Sam weighs in on the micro framework movement and loves Zepto, Underscore, and Backbone.


• “We’re living in a WebKit world on mobile.”


• The goal of the Basecamp Mobile app was to “feel like a web app.”


• Basecamp Mobile was a team effort by Sam, Josh, and Jason Zimdars.


• “Responsive Web Design”, a term coined by Ethan Marcotte.


• Less Framework is an adaptive grid CSS framework for desktop and mobile.


• Cinco is the yet-to-be-released framework behind Basecamp Mobile built on Stitch, Backbone, CoffeeScript, and Zepto.


• Sprockets powers the new Rails 3.1 Asset Pipeline


• Jammit is an alternative to Sprockets.


• The Ruby Racer from Charles Lowell embeds the V8 Javascript Interpreter into Ruby


• The Git commit heard round the world.


• Baren generates images from Processing source.


• Jamie Dihiansan is the design talent behind the great Pow web site


• Pow uses docco for documentation.


• Rack-legacy allows you to serve up PHP from Pow.


• Be sure and snag Trevor Burnham’s excellent CoffeeScript book


• Josh and DHH are Sam’s programming heroes.

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!