M-Pesa Blends Fintech + Mobile in Kenya

I rarely go to the bank nowadays.
 
~Taxi driver in Nairobi, Kenya speaking to
a 60 Minutes reporter about M-Pesa

M-Pesa is the mobile payment service that dominates Kenya. M-Pesa runs on mobile phones, and you can use it to pay for almost anything. M-Pesa is used by Kenyans regardless of income level, technical skill, or location (urban or rural). In 2015, 42% of the Kenyan GDP was processed through M-Pesa.

“Pesa” is the Swahili word for money, and the “M” stands for mobile. “Lipa na M-Pesa” means “purchase with M-Pesa”. My first M-Pesa experience happened during RubyConf Kenya in May 2016. So many developers at the conference raved about the service that I had to try it.

ActionCable vs. Socket.io at ConFoo

How do you achieve real time, bi-directional, event-based communications in your apps? The Socket.io library is tested and true. ActionCable, new with Ruby on Rails version 5, is a challenger. Which solution is better, and why?

This presentation compares Socket.io and ActionCable (included w/Ruby on Rails version 5).

From Spreadsheets to Rails

Excel spreadsheets are ok for quick analysis, but when the rows are too many and the formulas are too complex, recalc time slows to a crawl. Plus, sharing a spreadsheet is cumbersome due to security and version control headaches. One solution: Moving away from the spreadsheet, and building a web app instead.

Getting Started With Clojure Koans

Clojure is a dialect of the Lisp programming language that runs on the on the Java virtual machine (JVM).

One advantage of running on the JVM: Clojure apps can leverage the vast library of Java apps that already exist. If a company has invested heavily in Java, they can bring Clojure into the mix without having to re-write their tried and tested Java code.

This post shows how to start experimenting with Clojure on Mac OS X.

Parallelism at SCNA 2016

SCNA has long been one of my favorite conferences. Reason: Rich conversations with other attendees. People who attend SCNA come from a wide range of developer communities and they represent most of the languages in use today. Each community grows stronger when we borrow good ideas from each other.