Come on out and hack!

Join your fellow Rubyists for a night of conversation, hacking, and (if folks want to chip in) pizza. Our first Hack Night will be held at the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) just a few blocks from Union Station. Commuters will find it easy to stop by on the way home from work.

Bring your laptop. We'll be hacking on MongoDB and its Ruby driver so please try to install them before you get there. It's simple to do and takes about 15 minutes. See the instructions below.

Ginny Hendry will lead us through an unstructured & informal agenda. Rubyists of all skill levels are welcome. If you're a beginner we'll pair you with a more experienced Rubyist. Thanks also to Chirag Patel, Daniel Peters, Joe Sak, and Sean Corbett for putting hack nights on the ChicagoRuby menu.

RSVP at least 24 hours in Advance
Please be sure to RSVP with your FULL NAME so that the security team has your name on the admission list. The name on your RSVP must match your ID - just like airport security. See you then!

Installing MongoDB for Ruby:

Go to http://www.mongodb.or.... Choose QuickStart and follow directions for your operating system.

Get the Ruby gem. (Note that on some operating systems the following commands must be preceded by sudo )

gem install gemcutter
gem tumble # may not be necessary but go ahead

(If it says your rubygems is out of date, see http://gemcutter.org/... on how to update.)

gem install mongo

Next step is optional and beginners may want to skip it if they're not sure they're set up to compile C extensions. It makes Mongo run faster from Ruby.

gem install mongo_ext

If you want to play, mongodb.org has a Ruby Tutorial.