Spacerobots:

“How many languages do you speak?” — Owen Lars

“I am fluent in over 6 million forms of communication.” — Protocol Droid

Was Rails 3 one of them?

It sure seems like you have to be C-3PO to make it as a dev:

• html now html 5, css and now css 3,

• ruby - modules, mixins, and metaprogramming

• rails - rails routing, rails responders, validations, migrations, built-in helpers

• tdd/bdd (whatever you call it this week) - test unit, shoulda, cucumber, rspec,

• yaml, xml, csv (doubtful that csv actually counts against us tho),

• erb, haml

• database - does sql/mysql cut it? nope. now you need to know couchdb, mongodb, redis, friendly, riak, and someflavordb,

• mashups/apis - aws, ec2, ebs, s3 (sheesh Amazon), and whatever api so-and-so came up with that you want to eat, SOAP, REST

• javascript and jquery and gotta know all the plugin options too,

• and then there is the command line:

• rails <command> (formerly script/<command> <option>), gem <command> <option>, cap <in your ass>, rake <or sake>, thor <Wotan love 'im>,

• version control - svn, now git,

• "dare i mention our great friend and sometimes nemesis, extemporaneously?"[/(re)[a-z]*.*(g).*(ex)/i];[$1, $2, $3] * ''

• and I haven’t even mentioned essential unix commands -

• grep, scp, ssh (are you private or pubic?), top, less, tail, head -

• for the hardcore fans: sed and awk,

• and we also have our text editor “language” which is really just a human-muscle-memory set -

• textmate, vim, emacs, xcode, gedit, joe (yes I said joe).

• how many skillsets do we really have?

• how many do we need?

• doesn’t anyone else think this is insanity?

• ipad.