Developing with Ruby in a third-world country

In 20013, I brought one of the cutting edge framework, Ruby on Rails to one of the least developed countries in the world, Myanmar.

This is the story, and the lessons learnt from it.

Transcript

1. Hello - မဂ#လာပါ Mike Myat Min Han @mmhan
2. Intro This is my first ever talk in English I’m a no0b I have an interesting story to share with you.
3. Developing with Ruby in a 3rd world country
4. 3rd World Country Myanmar
5. Myanmar
6. International Bandwidth - http://mmrdrs.com/2015/09/24/5-facts-about-the-internet-market-in-myanmar/ - http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/1%20Broadband-Infrastructure-in-the- ASEAN-9-Region.pdf - http://cloudscorecard.bsa.org/2016/pdf/country_reports/ 2016_Country_Report_Malaysia.pdf 0 150 300 450 600 2013 2015 Myanmar Malaysia
7. Ruby in Myanmar
8. 2012.01 Founded MyanmarCarsDB.com, now CarsDB.com PHP Developer, in Singapore Prototyped with Wordpress It took off.
9. Where do we go from WP? Already using MVC and git. Read about TDD, CI and etc.
10. PHP? Slow to keep up with modern tools and techniques.
11. $foo->bar 3 extra keys to press compared to foo.bar
12. Holy gRails
13. Honeymoon with Rails Rails got me hooked ActiveRecord ActiveSupport methods like 4.years.ago Cool community
14. 2013.01 Returned to Yangon Started running it as CTO Started to plan to scale.
15. rails -v Check out the latest rails version Connection Reset Once in every 10 requests
16. rails new fetching gem metadata … . . .
17. Check Router $600 set-up fees $120 monthly The best The highest bandwidth $ could buy
18. 3 Mbps
19. router.inspect if !router.adapter.valid? router.warranty.void! router.catch_fire! end
20. traffic.inspect < 1,000 Kbps Peak hours throughput
21. Wait Read about what’s new
23. TL;DR; 3 engineers Months Learned a few things along the way
24. 3 lessons
25. #1
26. Language/Framework Choices Rails is dead? Should you care? Languages/Frameworks doesn’t solve your problems. They solve most people’s problems
27. You’re unique! So are your problems!
28. CarsDB Bad connectivity Blackouts Flood
29. Twitter Would it be a bigger unicorn if it weren’t for rails?
30. Factors Is it fast to develop? Does it scale? Does it fit my business needs? Does it give me the pleasure of solving problems?
31. #1 Optimise for developer pleasure
32. #2
33. SG One of the best internet connection in SEA
34. YGN Had withdrawal symptoms at first Use REPL: irb, byebug to guess Offline Documentation: Dash/Zeal, DevDocs, Rdoc Source code Construct better Google queries
35. Limited resources force you to make do with what you've got. There's no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative. - Jason Fried, Rework
36. #2 Examine what you are taking for granted
37. #2 - Examine what you are taking for granted ActiveRecord Making n+1 queries Gem? ActiveAdmin Text Editor Auto-suggest
38. #3
39. Stuck How do I write tests? How do I deploy? How do I speed up my app?
40. Knowledge Transfer A handful of ruby developers in Yangon A couple of Ruby developers I have managed to pair with LAN can be faster than WAN
41. #3 Participate in your community
42. Ruby Developers Ruby developers are scarce in Myanmar But it’s growing
43. YangonRb Workshops Meet-ups Training Courses (Soon)
44. RubyConfKL A group of active developers in the community A group of awesome companies
45. 3 lessons 1. Optimise for developer pleasure 2. Examine what you are taking for granted 3. Participate in your community