We went to the Jolt Awards Ceremony tonight. The Dr. Dobbs Excellence in Programming Award was awarded to Bruce Schneier (Mr. Cryptography).

The Jolt Awards themselves had high points and low points. On the high side, I’m overjoyed that “Agile Web Development with Rails” won the Jolt for Technical Book.. a rare and dignified honor indeed Congrats guys! Not only that, but Rails won the Jolt in the Web Development Tool category. Kudos to DHH and 37 Signals.

Another high point was that Clover by Cenqua won a Productivity Award in the Testing Tool category.. Way to go, guys! Great folks, great company, great tools. I had the pleasure of meeting in person & chatting with Peter & Brandon tonight after the awards.

The low side, Microsoft won several Jolts for Database Engine (SQL Server 2005), Development Environment (Visual Studio Team System 2005), and Libraries, Frameworks, and Components (.NET Framework 2.0). To add insult to injury Visual Studio was awarded this year’s Hall of Fame entry. I hope this doesn’t mean that the SD Conferences are becoming M$-suckupathons.

One more thing.. for those that don’t know yet… Dr. Dobbs is absorbing SD Magazine. A New & Improved Dr. Dobbs will be on the stands soon.