Ruby Conference 2015

1-36 out of 66 results

40:13

Berkopec, Nate

Minitest is a testing library of just 1,500 lines of Ruby code. By comparison, Rspec clocks in at nearly 15,000! Why is Minitest so small? I'd like to investigate by doing a guided read of Minitest's source code.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

A Muggle's Guide to Tail Call Optimization in Ruby

42:02

Guinther, Danny

Submitted for your approval: a circle of torment unchronicled by the poets of old, a terror at the heart of many a horror story: SystemStackError: stack level too deep Tremble no more! Conquer the well of eternity! Behold the secrets of tail recursion and tail call optimization in Ruby! Witness the metamorphosis of a simple function as we explore the hidden power of tail call optimization buried deep within the Ruby VM! Follow the transformation to the revelation of tail call optimization's most ghastly secret: in many ways it's really just a special type of loop construct! The horror!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

A Tale of Two Feature Flags

29:33

Sliter, Rebecca

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Feature flags are a quick win for development teams seeking a way to more rapidly release software but can create unexpected technical complexity. Join us for a comparison of the life-cycles of two seemingly similar feature flags. We'll discuss the challenges teams often face when implementing them, as well as strategies to avoid these issues and deliver software quickly and reliably.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Beating Go thanks to the power of randomness

45:47

Pfeiffer, Tobias

Go is a board game that is more than 2,500 years old (yes, this is not about the programming language!) and it is fascinating from multiple viewpoints. For instance, go bots still can’t beat professional players, unlike in chess. This talk will show you what is so special about Go that computers still can’t beat humans. We will take a look at the most popular underlying algorithm and show you how the Monte Carlo method, basically random simulation, plays a vital role in conquering Go's complexity and creating the strong Go bots of today.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Bikeshed! Live!

41:17

Phoenix, Evan et al.

Everyone loves live coding! What's not to love about watching someone struggle through some trivial code while the audience corrects their every syntax error? This session takes that to the next level by adding literal play-by-play commentary to a live coding session. Come and join us for what is sure to be a hilarious (and hopefully informational) trainwreck.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Botany with Bytes

28:36

Nicolai, Lito

Plants are tiny computers. As they grow, the sprouts are computing from first principles how to be a plant. We’ll see how they do it! This talk uses Ruby and the ‘graphics’ gem to build models of all kinds of plants, from algae blooms to juniper branches. We’ll touch on rewriting systems, formal grammars, and Alan Turing’s contributions to botany. We’ll look at the shapes of euphorbia, artichoke, and oregon grape, and how these come from plants’ love of sunlight and greedy desire for growth. By the end, we'll have a series of great visual metaphors for fundamental computer science concepts!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Building CLI Apps for Everyone

40:23

Lee, Terence

Many projects rely on command-line tools to provide an efficient and powerful interface to work. Building tools for everyone can be difficult, because of conflicting environment or OS. How can we build command-line apps that work for everyone and still write Ruby? This talk will discuss how to use mruby-cli to build cross-platform apps in Ruby. Our goal will be to build a CLI app using mruby and produce a self-contained binary that can be shipped to end users. Since mruby is designed to be embedded and statically compiled, it's also really good at packaging ruby code.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Changing the Unchangeable: The Hows and Whys of Immutable Data Structures

34:41

Urani, Brad

Immutable data structures give us peace of mind, but using them is challenging. How do you build an immutable list? Why would you use one? Join us and learn what makes a data structure "persistent", the holy grail combination of immutability and performance. We'll see not just how to use them, but also why they're a good idea and how they work. Most importantly, we'll see how these data structures are useful in real-life programming scenarios. Master this cornerstone of functional programming and learn the answer to the ultimate riddle: how do you change a list while leaving it unchanged?

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Code, Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness

24:29

Durham, Kinsey Ann

Life’s good. People who never thought they could code are becoming developers. Outreach programs are getting people in, but we’re facing an even bigger problem. Getting them to stay there. 57% of women alone leave the tech industry. The root cause of people leaving, and not just people from underrepresented backgrounds, points to company culture. Let’s build company cultures the way we build products, applying scrum principles we use everyday. This talk dives into the reasons why people are leaving the industry in droves, and what unexpected, actionable steps we can take to solve this problem.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Communicating Intent Through Git

37:39

Freeman, Josh

Git is a distributed version control system for our source code. It provides the technical mechanism to answer the who, what, when, and where of every decision made. However, Git never requires us to answer why. Software is the result of thousands of decisions. Add this feature; clarify this method; change this behavior. Every team should be able to know why a decision was made. Creating software is a journey—let Git be your travel journal.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Cucumbers Have Layers: A Love Story

37:13

Livingston-Gray, Sam

Cucumber sucks. Features are hard to write and constantly break when the UI changes. Step definitions are annoying to create and a freaking nightmare to maintain. And Cucumber suites take for-EVER to run, because you have to wait for a web browser. Except... [almost] none of that is actually true. After years of making awful messes with Cucumber, I finally found a way to use it that worked well, and a project I couldn't have done without it. I'd like to show you one way to use Cucumber that can be elegant, powerful, expressive, and—believe it or not—fast.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Design Thinking for Rubyists

30:10

Barrett, Louisa

Everyone has the power to be creative, and design thinking is about shifting your mindset to fully embrace your ability to generate new ideas. Let's explore how to flex those creative muscles -- because while technology needs change, the ability to generate great ideas that resonate with users will never lose value.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Domo Arigato mruby Roboto

35:57

Yamane, Yurie et al.

Let's make a self-balancing robot with mruby! We show inverted pendulum robots using mruby. Inverted pendulum robot is two-wheeled, self-balancing robot like Segway. A self-balancing robot usually uses C or C++ because of real time responsibility, but we try to use mruby. We show you two robots, LEGO Mindstorms EV3 version and Raspberry Pi DIY version, and describe how to make them.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Everything You Know About the GIL is Wrong

46:41

D'Antonio, Jerry

When a Rubyist hears "concurrency" they usually Google Elixir, Go, or even Node.js. Turns out, Ruby can be great for concurrency! The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) does NOT prevent Ruby programs from performing concurrently. In this presentation we'll discuss the true meaning of concurrency, explore the inner-workings of the GIL, and gain a deeper understanding of how the GIL effects concurrent programs. Along the way we'll write a bunch of concurrent Ruby code, run it on multiple interpreters, and compare the results.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Extremely Defensive Coding

34:55

Phippen, Sam

Defensive programming is one of those abstract ideas that seems great but is often unclear in practice. In this talk we'll look at some of the extremely defensive patterns that have been driven out in RSpec through the years. We'll look at building Ruby that works across a range of interpreters (including 1.8.7!). We'll investigate how you can write code that defends against objects that redefine methods like send, method and is a?. You should come to this talk if you want to learn about method resolution in Ruby, and cross interpreter design patterns.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

GDB: A Gentle Intro

42:57

Clark, Jason

We love Ruby’s elegance, simplicity, and flexibility. But our favorite language perches atop a world of native code. When that other world intrudes on your peaceful Ruby, GDB, the venerable GNU debugger, is the tool to turn to. We’ll examine setting up Ruby to work with GDB. We’ll learn the fundamental commands, and soon you’ll be debugging with ease. We’ll even peer deep into Ruby object internals and face down crashes, deadlocks, and bugs. Whether you’re writing a native gem, hacking the Ruby VM, or just want a glimpse of the layers below, this talk is for you!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Hacking Spacetime for a Successful Career

37:50

Hays, Brandon

We talk a lot about building well-crafted software. But what about a well-crafted career in software? Who is making sure you’re on track for the life you want five, ten, thirty years from now? We’ll build a time machine and follow a typical development career through various tracks, and see how a few basic principles can radically alter your career’s trajectory over time. If you’ve ever felt the existential dread of “climbing the walls” at your job, you’re not alone. We’ll explore why and share some concrete steps you can take now to create a long, happy, rewarding career.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Hardware Hacking: You can be a Maker

26:31

Sexton, Christopher et al.

There is something fundamentally satisfying about building things that bridge the gap between your code and the physical world. This father/daughter duo will show you how they've bridge that gap. I frequently find Rubyists that are interested in tinkering with hardware but are often intimidated by the idea. Turns out, it is so easy even a grown-up can do it. In fact it is easier than it has ever been. And the best part is, you can use little Ruby.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

How does Bundler work, anyway?

42:30

Arko, André

We all use Bundler at some point, and most of us use it every day. But what does it do, exactly? Why do we have to use bundle exec? What's the point of checking in the Gemfile.lock? Why can't we just gem install the gems we need? Join me for a walk through the reasons that Bundler exists, and a guide to what actually happens when you use it. Finally, we'll cover some Bundler "pro tips" that can improve your workflow when developing on multiple applications at once.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

How to Crash an Airplane

42:11

Means, Nickolas

On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 was en route to Chicago when a mechanical failure caused the plane to become all but uncontrollable. In this unsurvivable situation, the flight crew saved more than half of those onboard. How did they do it? Flight crews and software teams actually have a lot in common, and there's much we can learn from how the best crews do their jobs. What can we learn from the story of United 232? While this talk won't earn you your pilot's license, you'll definitely come away with some fresh ideas on how to make your team even more amazing.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

How to Performance

30:03

Uchitelle, Eileen

Understanding performance output can feel like reading tea leaves. It makes sense to a few people, but many of us are left in the dark; overwhelmed and frustrated by the data. Additionally there are a ton of performance tools to choose from; StackProf, RubyProf, AllocationTracer. Where do you even start? In this talk we will not only look at how to read performance output, but when and how to use the right profilers for the job. We'll discuss a variety of methods and techniques for benchmarking and profiling so you can get the most out of each performance tool.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

How to Stop Hating your Test Suite

44:08

Searls, Justin

Your app is a unique snowflake. Your tests are too… but they shouldn't be! Years helping teams write better tests has taught me one thing: consistency is crucial. Inconsistent tests slow teams down, wasting time to understand how each test works. Deciding on conventions—even arbitrary ones—can prevent tremendous pain later. This talk will introduce a ready-to-fork Test Style Guide of carefully-considered rules and templates for Rubyists. You can customize it to fit your preferred tools, too. Soon, you'll be on your way to having more consistent tests that are much more fun to maintain!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

I Estimate this Talk will be 20 Minutes Long, Give or Take 10 Minutes

40:30

Rappin, Noel

Estimates are like weather forecasts. Getting them right is hard, and everybody complains when you are wrong. Estimating projects is often critically important to the people who pay us to develop software. We can do better. We can focus our estimates on the parts we do well, like estimating complexity. We can present estimates without falsely inflating them, and we can be transparent during the development process. The humble point estimate can help you, if you understand its limitations. Better estimates and communication of estimates will make your projects run more smoothly.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Inside Ruby's VM: The TMI Edition.

39:10

Patterson, Aaron

This is about Ruby's Virtual Machine. Specifically MRI's Virtual Machine. We will take a dive in to how your Ruby code is compiled in to byte code and how that byte code is executed. Once we get a grip on how the VM works, we'll see how to make it perform tricks the likes of which you've never seen! Ok, maybe you have seen them, just not with MRI's virtual machine.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

JRuby 9000 Is Out; Now What?

43:57

Enebo, Thomas et al.

JRuby 9000 is here! After years of work, JRuby now supports Ruby 2.2 and ships with a redesigned optimizing runtime. The first update release improved performance and compatibility, and we've only just begun. In this talk we'll show you where we stand today and cover upcoming work that will keep JRuby moving forward: profiling, inlining, unboxing...oh my!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Just a Ruby Minute

36:30

Patterson, Aaron et al.

We're bringing Just a Minute -- the popular British gameshow format -- to RubyConf! The rules of the game are simple, the results are hilarious, and who knows, you might even learn something new! Come join us to see some of your favorite Rubyists be utterly silly... for a minute at a time, at least. Contestants: Aaron Patterson, Andy Croll, Kerri Miller, Sam Phippen

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Keynote and Q&A: Matz

1:12:38

Matsumoto, Yukihiro

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Keynote: Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm

42:55

Zona, Carina C.

Coders have ethical responsibilities. We can extract remarkably precise intuitions about people. Do we have a right to know what they didn't consent to share, even when they shared data leading us there? Balancing human needs and business specs can be tough. How do we mitigate against unintended outcomes? In this talk, we look at examples of uncritical programming, & painful results of using insightful data in ways that were benignly intended. You'll learn practices for examining how code might harm individuals. We’ll look at how to flip the paradigm, for consequences that are better for all.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Keynote: Leagues of Sea and Sky

43:29

Norris, Jeff

In this keynote, Jeff tells three stories of inventions for nautical and aeronautical exploration to reveal how partnership has shaped the greatest journeys in history and how it should shape your own. From the sextant to holographic mixed reality, Jeff shares meticulously researched history along with some of the projects he's led in space exploration via a unique medium that he created just for this presentation.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Keynote: Stupid Ideas for Many Computers

27:32

Hammerly, Aja

There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn't about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing. Sentiment analysis based on emoji? Why not? Hacky performance testing frameworks? Definitely! Multiplayer infinite battleship? Maybe? The world's most inefficient logic puzzle solver? Awesome! If you are interested in having some fun and laughing at reasonable code for unreasonable problems this talk is for you.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Learn to Make Music. With Ruby.

45:47

Wilson, Darin

If you can write code, you can make music. And in this talk, and you'll see exactly how. We'll take a look at Sonic Pi, a powerful, multi-platform app that uses a Ruby DSL to create just about any kind of music you can think of. And if you've never made a note of music in your life, fear not: you'll also get a crash course in music composition and learn how the elements of rhythm, melody, and harmony work together to make a cohesive whole. Bring your laptop and headphones: this will be very hands-on, and you'll be making your first track before we even get to questions!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Making it on your own and the pitfalls of gem dependencies

34:41

Murray, Nikki et al.

Putting "require '[gem name]'" at the top of your Ruby file and running 'gem install' or 'bundle install' can be an easy way to solve a difficult problem. But you could be potentially adding hundreds of lines of code you didn't write or read, for only half a of a fix. Did the gem actually solve your problem or is it just an approximate solution? How much research did you do on that gem first? Are there hidden security risks in it? In this talk, you will learn how to evaluate gems for fit, figure out when it makes more sense to write your own, and how to go about writing your own.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

32:13

Mastey, Joe

High-tech culture is obsessed with managing time. In fact, if there’s one thing that we spend as much time on as actual work, it’s getting the most out of that work time. But here, like elsewhere, choosing the wrong optimization does more harm than good. Wringing every minute out of your day is more likely to burn you out than to turn you into a code-producing machine. Instead, we need to get better at managing our energy. Put down the kitchen timer, because in this talk you’ll learn about better research-driven approaches to get more out of work and life.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Messenger: The (Complete) Story of Method Lookup

28:47

McGavren, Jay

You call a method on an object, and it invokes the instance method defined on the class. Simple. Except when the method isn't on the class itself, because it's inherited from a superclass. Or a singleton class, mixin, or refinement. Actually, this is kind of complicated! In this talk, we'll take an inside look at Ruby method lookup. We'll start with the basics, like inherited methods, and work our way up to the cutting-edge stuff, like refinements and prepending mixins. You'll leave with a clear understanding of how it all works, and maybe with some better ideas for structuring your code!

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Mind Over Error

35:06

Martens, Michel

Industries like aviation and power plants have improved their safety mechanisms using our growing understanding of the nature of human error, but have we kept up? How do we incorporate the ideas from Human Error, The Design of Everyday Things, and other great resources into what we build? I want to show you how to improve the safety of our systems by reducing their complexity and generating accurate mental models.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

Mo Money Mo Problems (with Ruby)

25:48

Soria, Federico

Are you thinking or starting to build an app that deals with money? Come to this talk to learn the best practices of handling money transactions. In my 2+ years working in a startup based on payments, I have been able to compile do's and don'ts of handling money.

2015

Confreaks, LLC

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