Asp Forum - [JOB] Possible ruby job in SF Bay Area

Joel VanderWerf

3/11/2005 3:21:00 AM

This is an informal announcement of a possible position for
an intermediate programmer with 2-3 years of experience in
Ruby and C in the SF Bay Area.

We are not sure yet if we will hire a full-time permanent
person, or a part-time contractor for a 10 month project.
Salary level for the full-time permanent position would
likely be around 50-60K/year with university benefits. The
contract rate would be adjusted upwards accordingly, but
without benefits (AFAIK).

This is really just an early "heads up". You're welcome to
contact us, but the formal hiring process will probably not
start for several months, and is dependent on funding.

======
Skills
======

Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
acceptable substitute.)

GUI: Experienced with some GUI toolkit, pref. in Ruby.
Completed at least one substantial GUI project.
(We have used Fox and Tk in previous projects.)

C: 1 year of professional work in C is preferred.

Edu: BA in CS/EE, or other field of engineering or science.

Also good to have:

* OpenGL

* Data modeling, database

* Experience working in science/engineering

* Interest or experience in traffic simulation (in
particular, Paramics, though that's rather unlikely)

* Interest in future of public transit

* Some Windows development experience (MSVC). We develop for
Windows, Linux, and Sun, but most users are on Windows.
For this position, most development can be done on any
platform that supports ruby and the selected GUI toolkit.

* Some basic web site design and programming.

================
Responsibilities
================

The project is to continue development of a tool for
modeling, simulation, and visualization of "bus rapid
transit" (BRT) systems
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rap...). We are
applying for FTA funding for about 10 months of work. Your
role on the project will round out a team of 2 or 3 others,
and will emphasize developing GUI tools that can be used by
transit planners to design models of transit corridors and
to conduct experiments based on simulations to evaluate the
effectiveness of BRT options. Corridor models are stored in
a hierarchical modeling languag called BRTML. Background on
the project is at http://path.berkeley.ed....
(There's software there, too, but it won't do anything
useful unless you have Paramics, which is an expensive
traffic simulation tool.) There will also be a GUI to
interact with the running simulations and display event
data, graphs, etc.

The organization is California PATH, UC Berkeley,
http://www.path.be..., located at the Richmond Field
Station, a 20 minute drive from campus. We do transportation
research on a mix of federal, state, and industry funding,
with an emphasis on using new technologies to improve the
safety and performance of traffic and transit. Our group of
about 50-60 people interacts closely with faculty and
students in the College of Engineering. Sometimes we even
get on the evening news
(http://www2.cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_0391...).

PATH has an interesting mix of people: engineers
specializing in real-time systems, radios and wireless
networking, sensors, automotive control, human factors;
software people, both real-time and "soft"; automotive
safety researchers; applied mathematicians; cognitive
scientists. The organization is fairly flat and relaxed;
it's about halfway between an academic department and a
small engineering R&D company.

The biggest downside of working here is the cost of living
in the bay area, but you get what you pay for. Also, all of
our funding is soft, so even "permanent" employees have no
real job security (but turnover is very low).

--
Joel VanderWerf California PATH, UC Berkeley
mailto:vjoel@path.berkeley.edu Ph. (510) 231-9446
http://www.path.be... FAX (510) 231-9565

24 Answers

Jamis Buck

3/11/2005 4:37:00 AM

On Mar 10, 2005, at 8:20 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
>
> Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
> lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
> acceptable substitute.)

Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)

What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
definition of complex) Ruby project?

- Jamis

Joao Pedrosa

3/11/2005 4:45:00 AM

Hi,

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:37:08 +0900, Jamis Buck <jamis_buck@byu.edu> wrote:
> On Mar 10, 2005, at 8:20 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> >
> > Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
> > lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
> > acceptable substitute.)
>
> Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
> of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
> only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
> but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)
>
> What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
> definition of complex) Ruby project?

I don't know. But > 50k LoC is a little bit over the top I think.
Below that is reasonable. What's the biggest project in Ruby that
people have heard of? I remember Rich Kilmer's and the site that Dave
Thomas wrote. :-)

Cheers,
Joao

Luke Graham

3/11/2005 4:56:00 AM

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:44:59 +0900, Joao Pedrosa <joaopedrosa@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:37:08 +0900, Jamis Buck <jamis_buck@byu.edu> wrote:
> > On Mar 10, 2005, at 8:20 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> > >
> > > Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
> > > lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
> > > acceptable substitute.)
> >
> > Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
> > of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
> > only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
> > but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)
> >
> > What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
> > definition of complex) Ruby project?
>
> I don't know. But > 50k LoC is a little bit over the top I think.
> Below that is reasonable. What's the biggest project in Ruby that
> people have heard of? I remember Rich Kilmer's and the site that Dave
> Thomas wrote. :-)

Im only up to 1.25k LoC in my current project, and thats my Ruby record.
I dont expect it to break the 1.5k LoC mark. Theres that much again in
handwritten xml input files though, does that count? :)

--
spooq

Luke Graham

3/11/2005 4:59:00 AM

Tallied up the (c++) output - around 32k Loc. :D

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 14:55:58 +1000, Luke Graham <spoooq@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:44:59 +0900, Joao Pedrosa <joaopedrosa@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:37:08 +0900, Jamis Buck <jamis_buck@byu.edu> wrote:
> > > On Mar 10, 2005, at 8:20 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
> > > > lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
> > > > acceptable substitute.)
> > >
> > > Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
> > > of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
> > > only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
> > > but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)
> > >
> > > What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
> > > definition of complex) Ruby project?
> >
> > I don't know. But > 50k LoC is a little bit over the top I think.
> > Below that is reasonable. What's the biggest project in Ruby that
> > people have heard of? I remember Rich Kilmer's and the site that Dave
> > Thomas wrote. :-)
>
> Im only up to 1.25k LoC in my current project, and thats my Ruby record.
> I dont expect it to break the 1.5k LoC mark. Theres that much again in
> handwritten xml input files though, does that count? :)
>
> --
> spooq
>

--
spooq

Kirk Haines

3/11/2005 5:48:00 AM

Jamis Buck wrote:

>> Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
>> lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
>> acceptable substitute.)
>
> Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
> of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
> only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
> but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)
>
> What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
> definition of complex) Ruby project?

Interesting question. I just went and did simple wc tallies of the ruby
lines only out of a number of my larger web applications, not counting any
of the HTML or email views, and the average non-trivial app seems to fall
in the 2k to 4k range, with an average of about 20 bytes per line. The
largest single app only has almost 8k LOC of Ruby (about 220kb of code),
though if I wrote it today, it'd be probably less than 1/2 the LOC and
1/3rd the number of bytes, leaving the largest at 7.3k LOC.

None of the libraries that I have written come up to that size, either,
unless one rolls tests into the count.

Kirk Haines

Dave Burt

3/11/2005 7:10:00 AM

> Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
> lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
> acceptable substitute.)

Jamis Buck:
"... 8.5k lines"
Luke Graham:
"... 2k to 4k range"
"... 7.3k LOC"

And, IIRC:
Rails: 2 kLOC
Basecamp: 4 kLOC

How much ruby code is in the ruby standard distribution, for comparison? I'd
be guessing along these lines:
core: 100 kLOC
stdlib: 100 kLOC
total in standard ruby 1.8.2: 250 kLOC

Big hitters among these:
rdoc: 16 kLOC
rexml: 9 kLOC
soap: 8.6 kLOC

So the successful applicant will have written one of the (top 5?) largest
Ruby projects in existence.

Cheers,
Dave

why the lucky stiff

3/11/2005 7:11:00 AM

Jamis Buck wrote:

> Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby
> consisting of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib,
> Net::SSH, is only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count
> the unit tests, but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)

I've always held to the old adage: If you've written 10K lines of Ruby
code, then you're using it wrong.

Wouldn't it be awesome if that were true?

_why

Joel VanderWerf

3/11/2005 7:23:00 AM

Jamis Buck wrote:
> On Mar 10, 2005, at 8:20 PM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
>
>>
>> Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
>> lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
>> acceptable substitute.)
>
>
> Just curious: how many people have written a project in Ruby consisting
> of over 10K lines of code? Even my own most complex lib, Net::SSH, is
> only 8.5k lines. (Well, I guess it's 16.7k if you count the unit tests,
> but I'm still curious as to how common this is.)
>
> What is the average LOC for a typical "complex" (for some arbitrary
> definition of complex) Ruby project?

Hm, maybe that is not a useful criterion. A program is not better
because it is larger. But it may not be fair to compare lines of
library code with lines of application code.... you have to think (and
test) harder for each line of library code.

My current deliverable on another project (not related to the one in the
announcement) is over 21K of ruby. That doesn't count blank lines and
comments, or unit tests. It does count my own libraries, mostly written
for this project. That's with frequent refactoring efforts, too. It's
fairly dense. (And it generates 8K lines of C code.)

For the predecessor to the announced project, the figure is 13K lines of
ruby. Another project was 8.6K (some generated by racc, to be fair).

For the job, I was thinking specifically of GUI code, which tends to
inflate LOC at a faster rate than it inflates complexity, until you get
tired of typing and put some effort into metaprogramming.

Joel VanderWerf

3/11/2005 7:35:00 AM

why the lucky stiff wrote:
> I've always held to the old adage: If you've written 10K lines of Ruby
> code, then you're using it wrong.
>
> Wouldn't it be awesome if that were true?

Oooh... a MATLAB clone in 10KLOR. MegaGolf, anyone?

Laurent Julliard

3/11/2005 7:55:00 AM

comp.lang.ruby

[JOB] Possible ruby job in SF Bay Area

Joel VanderWerf

Jamis Buck

Joao Pedrosa

Luke Graham

Luke Graham

Kirk Haines

Dave Burt

why the lucky stiff

Joel VanderWerf

Joel VanderWerf

Laurent Julliard

x Login to ForumsZone