Wow. This is the first time in a while that I’ve been excited about a new programming language. Where learning the language wasn’t just a chore to stay employed. Going through the documentation, code examples and a couple of recent books. Such a fundamentally different way of looking at solving problems. Using Confreaks.tv, Safari Books online, and the excellent documentation. Can’t wait to build something for real!

Postgresql 9.5 introduced the long-waited for upsert. There are cases where instead of actually updating when the row already exists what you want is to return the primary key (or the whole row for that matter). Postgresql has a SQL extension called RETURNING that lets you get the values just inserted or updated but you can’t just DO NOTHING and get the value back.

After a long day programming do you look forward to more programming? OK then. You might want to check out http://exercism.io/ (You might want to also seek help. Go outside once in a while for crying out loud). It has problems in a wide variety of languages. You sign up with your github account and pick a language to work on (Java, Javascript, Scala, Python, Ruby are among the choices). You code up a solution to the problem and submit it. You can discuss your solution and others approaches and iterate on your design to improve it.

There is a really nice tutorial on upgrading your local Postgresql on OS X at Keita’s Blog. Uses brew. Straightforward.

One of the amazing things about Ruby is the Ruby community and the spirit of sharing that I encounter over and over again when interacting with people in the Ruby community. There are many fine books that can help you learn Ruby but there are also great online resources.