RubyNation 2016 Takeways

Lightning Talk by Danny and Dave of Mobelux

Transcript

1. RubyNation 2016 What we learned and why we should go to conferences
2. Intro
3. The State of the Union (A ∪ B) • Rubyists are continuing to focus on the future of Rails • Rubyists are starting to focus on the future beyond Ruby and Rails • The topic of the conference is not always the main topic • There is a relatively new focus on diversity and non-technical issues • Conference people love stickers
4. Part I: Tech Talks
5. Features of Rails 5 You Haven’t Heard About • Prathamesh Sonpatki (@_cha1tanya) • Currently at Big Binary (@bigbinary) • On the Rails Issues team
6. Yay! There’s a New Welcome Page!
7. Puma as Default Web Server • The default development server used to be WEBrick • WEBRick is single threaded, single process • Many if not most developers use Puma in development • It’s important to develop and test in a similar environment
8. Faster Partial Caching • Partial caching has always been a time-sink in Rails and now it’s improved
9. ActiveJob adapter per Job
10. Introducing the Crystal Programming Language • Will Leinweber (@leinweber) • Currently at Heroku • Works on Postgres
11. Introducing the Crystal Programming Language • Have a syntax similar to Ruby • Statically type-checked but without having to specify the type of variables or method arguments • Be able to call C code by writing bindings to it in Crystal • Compile to efficient native code • Incredibly fast!
12. Introducing the Crystal Programming Language • Lose dynamic metaprogramming goodies like #eval and #send • But with compile time macros we have similar abilities • Receive abstract syntax tree nodes and create code that is pasted into the program during compilation
13. Introducing the Crystal Programming Language • Allows for type restrictions • Neat features are type unions and also underscore matching
14. Friday Hugs and Cats • Aaron Patterson (@tenderlove) • Currently at GitHub (@github) • Core contributor to both Ruby and Rails • Ruby famous
16. Friday Hugs and Cats • Actual topic is garbage collection in Ruby • Garbage collection is how previously used memory is reclaimed • Used to be a manual process but now is handled by higher-level languages • Anyone who has played with the Benchmark gem knows how important but deadly the GC can be for performance
17. Mark and Sweep • Start GC when the system starts running out of memory • Enumerate the roots then visit objects referenced by them recursively and mark them reachable • Any object in memory that is not marked is garbage and collected
18. Incremental Garbage Collection • Instead of “stopping the world” to collect all unreachable objects, it can be done incrementally • Because things can change in between increments, write barriers are used to make sure currently used memory is not collected
19. Other Technical Talks • ActionCable and ReactJS Tie the Knot - Yatish Mehta (@yatish27) • Architecting Multiple Ruby on Rails Applications that Share a Common Code Base - Gregory Hodum (Solution Street) • A Closer Look: Breaking Apart HTTP - Jonathan Keam (@jonnyman9) • What Computer Scientists Know: Talking to the Microprocessor - David Bock (@bokmann) • The Bouncy Path To Trampolines - Nathan Hessler (@spune)
20. Part II
21. Principles of Play Linda Liukas @lindaliukas
22. "If code is the colouring pens and lego blocks of our times - the tools of creation...
23. "... how do we teach the curiosity, joy and wonder to our kids?"
24. STE(A)M Education
29. Diversity Gap
31. Takeaways • Learn to Teach • Mentor and Volunteer • Get the next generation ready for the Future, also Robots
32. Open Source: Power and the Passion Pat Allan @pat
33. Historical Definition Software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone
34. Modern Definition Building and collaborating in public.
35. Challenges • Who pays for it? • Who maintains it? • Cute Puppy Syndrome
36. What Can I do? • Contribute Code ◦ https://yourfirstpr.github.io/ • Contribute ◦ Community Funding - https://rubytogether.org/ • Educate
37. Takeaways • Contribute and lead • Open mentality instead of “Us vs. Them” • Users are one PR away from being contributors/developers too
38. Conclusion
39. Conclusion • It’s important to stay on top of future developments in our technologies • It’s important to meet other people in our field • It’s important to see what other people are doing • It’s important to be inspired by other people who are doing what we do • It’s important to spend personal time with your coworkers • It’s important to make goofy jokes and be personable and humble
40. Applause