Ruby Daemons using DRb ?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have worked at a couple of places where I had a job system connected to a web portal. The job system used a couple of daemons that I wrote that connected to the database with active record and ran various commands in parallel. I had a few Thread.new calls an so on.

At one time I had used backgroundrb to send email, but I forget exactly why, but I started using DRb alot for various other complex things and I liked the way I could communicate with the daemon over DRb if I wanted to. If I look in the older Rails 3 book that covers Rails 2.0, it mentions DRb as a viable background task solution.

I am starting to realize that Rails 3 has other stuff to look at, like I guess resque ? I think that may require redis and I seem to recall I had a problem trying to install redis on windows, so I am not sure if I really need to struggle through the redis windows install to get all that to work ?

Where I am right now is I have to present some code for an interview tomorrow. I am not sure how well the people at that company are familiar with Ruby, but I am also not sure if I should avoid presenting any of this DRb daemon code. I am trying to rewrite an old project I have in Rails 3 that does some web scraping, but I am not sure I have enough time to present a daemon process with all that as well, especially if I have to change it from DRb to something else.

A different company I had an interview with seemed to tell the recruiting agency I was weak technically and I think it was because they asked me about RVM and Resque which I was not familiar with. The way they described RVM, I told them sounded like the way gemfiles in Rails 3 handles the gems. The guys who interviewed me didn't seem to know alot about Ruby, except they knew that some other guys in a different part of the company use RVM and Resque.

I had been buying all the new ruby books for awhile, but every time a new version of something comes out, then I have to go buy a new book. It seems easier to learn from books than all of the blogs, but I have been trying to save money lately. I haven't gotten the Rails way for rails 3 yet.

2

where I said

If I look in the older Rails 3 book that covers Rails 2.0, it mentions DRb as a viable background task solution.

I meant to say:

If I look in the older Rails Way book that covers Rails 2.0, it mentions DRb as a viable background task solution.

3

To take a step back, I’d say tell 'em what you know and what you don’t know. If they need someone who’s really got a lot of experience specifically with redis and resque, that’s not you and it wouldn’t be a good fit for you or them. If they need someone who understands the conceptual issues at play and isn’t ‘hiring to the tool’ then your experience with DRb should be great.