All in a Day’s Work for an ISD Duo
Photo/Daniel Knapp
On June 4, Bousquet and Farajpour competed against 189 programmers from around the world to develop an Web-based application using the emerging Ruby on Rails technology.
The team had only 24 hours to complete its their winning entry, a billing application known as Sheets. However, the duo did not require the entire time allotted to complete the task, said Bousquet, a developer in the ISD Doheny Office of Technology.
“I spent about 16 hours working on [the] project for Railsday. I didn’t really know what I was going to be building until about three hours into the competition,” Bousquet said. “Together [with Cyrus], we spent a total of 20 manhours on it.”
The winning application allows users to track clients, projects and time spent on various tasks, as well as calculate fees for projects and create invoices from the records.
“This kind of task might have been thought impossible in other frameworks or languages. However, due to Rails’ ability to build agile web applications, it was easily done,” Bousquet said. “We had a great time participating, and we’re amazed at what we did get done with Rails in only 20 hours of development time.”
The competition also allowed Bousquet and Farajpour to flex their creative muscles.
“Railsday was a chance for me to see what a small, focused group of programmers could accomplish using Ruby on Rails in a short time space. I wanted to learn as much as I could about Rails, and this presented me with a crash course. In one day I more than doubled my knowledge on the topic,” Farajpour said.
The news of the duo’s win came June 30.
Ruby on Rails, an open-source Web application framework released in July 2004, is one of the fastest-growing programming aids available. It allows real-world applications to be developed with less code than other frameworks require and with a minimum of configuration.
Latest stories
- USC Price School Celebrates Naming Gift February 9, 2012 2:45 PM
- George Will Shares His Perspective on Politics February 9, 2012 1:10 PM
- Life on the Rez February 9, 2012 12:10 PM
-
For Journalists »
-
USC in the News
for 2/8/2012 »-
The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
-
-
Campus News
- Capital Connections
- USC faculty, staff and alumni in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento
- In Print
- New and recent books written or edited by USC faculty and staff
- Family Matters
- Achievements and awards
- Obituaries