Rails apps start out quickly and beautifully, but after a year features are a struggle, tests are slow, developers are grinding, and stakeholders are unhappy. "Skinny controllers and fat models" hasn't worked, and "use service objects!" is awfully vague. This talk explains how to compact the "big ball of mud" at the heart of your app into a bedrock of reliable code. It gives the steps to incrementally refactor models into a functional core and gives explicit rules for how to write light, reliable tests. https://push.cx/2015/railsconf