Ooochie: A Ruby Developer’s Journal

Well we made it back from Portland after a great weekend at RailsConf. I had mentioned that I wanted to learn a few things and meet a few people, and I'm happy to say I did just that. I think that this year, the meeting people was more important to me than the sessions. That said, I think there are a handful worth mentioning.

Surviving the big rewrite, moving yellowpages.com to rails, John Straw

It was pretty cool to hear how yellowpages.com just decided to rewrite their entire system in rails, and did it with only about 3-4 months of development. Impressive. John Straw attributes the success to a few things:

• Having a small development team
• Choosing the right platform
• Having close communication among team members with diverse viewpoints
• Freezing development on the existing site in order to prevent having to hit a moving target
• Updating the beta site frequently to easily communicate progress

The Launch: Dos and Don'ts of Real Life Deploys, Chris Wanstrath

Chris Wanstrath went through the stages of deployment: Alpha, Beta, Optimization, Launch, Panic, and Calm. It was cool to hear him talk about his real-life projects, famspam and the famous github, and what he experienced during deployment. I took away from this talk that Alpha and Beta phases are great tools to get feedback from your users and uncover any bugs. It also allows you to assess what really needs optimization before the real launch. Also, something goes wrong in almost every launch, so expect that there will be downtime.

Using Git to Manage and Deploy Rails Apps, Scott Chacon

OK, all I can say about this one is that this guy talks really fast and knows a TON about git. There is good info about the talk here and you can check out his gitcasts for some more git goodness.

Scaling Rails, Blaine Cook, Bradley Taylor, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Jim Meyer, Kevin Lawver

There were a couple of quotes from this talk that I thought were insightful. The first was Ezra, who said "the most important thing is getting your application out there and getting the opportunity to have to make it scale." I think that's great because it seems as though a lot of people try to prematurely optimize. Just get it out there, see where the weaknesses are, and then you can spend meaningful hours making it scale. The other quote I liked was from Blaine Cook, of Twitter, who said the biggest mistake developers make is "assuming the production environment is exactly like the development environment." I don't have a lot of experience with real deployments, so this one stuck with me. I hope I remember it when it counts.

ActiveRecord Associations and the Proxy Pattern, Nick Kallen

This was the talk that really made me say, "Wow." Nick Kallen flawlessly coded for the entire session, showing the audience the basics behind ActiveRecord associations. I can't say I've ever thought about what I would do if :has_many didn't exist, and it was really cool to watch him go through the steps... and writing tests first.

Other highlights of RailsConf 08 include but are not limited to:

• My railsconf t-shirt that actually fits!
• Hanging out with about 30 other women developers at the DevChix meetup. Thanks again to Desi for getting us all together and Obie for picking up the tab. :)
• The moment when DHH accidentally bumped into me... 'cause he's so dreamy. sigh. (HA you know I'm joking, right? :) )
• Visiting the monstrosity that is Powell's bookstore. I'll be reading for months!
• Being pinged in the #railsconf irc channel by someone who reads my blog! Yay for readers!
• This picture of me clearly looking at my laptop and not paying attention to whoever was speaking, taken by James Duncan Davidson.

All in all it was a great weekend. See you next year in Vegas.

RailsConf is this weekend! I, along with the rest of the Integrum team, will be arriving in Portland tomorrow (Thursday) evening, so find us and say hello! I hope to learn a few things and meet a few people, and I'll be sure to post notes and thoughts here next week sometime. Should be a fun time, hope to see you there!

I mentioned before that earlier this month I attended RailsConf in Portland, Oregon. A good time was had by all and amidst the impromptu band performances and drinking parties, I managed to learn a few things. I attended a talk during every session, some of which were very cool and others made me sleepy. Below is the list of talks that I think deserve mentioning.

Last night I went out for a couple of drinks with the guys from Integrum, and we ended up having quite the discussion about our work environment and our specific personalities. We talked a bit about the difference between men and women in the programming world; a topic that I find particularly interesting seeing as how I am one of few women in this line of work. One of the guys asked me if I thought it was hard to be a woman at Integrum, and I think he was surprised when I said "yes." The truth is, it's not Integrum that makes it hard for me, but the industry itself. Whether we like it or not, it is harder to be a woman developer than it is to be a man. I've actually been very lucky at Integrum, because while it's still hard for me, I give all the guys a lot of credit for allowing me to prove myself. Sometimes, women don't even get that chance. I like to think that I am good at what I do, and I want to be thought of as a good (maybe someday, great) developer and not just a chick who thinks she can code.

While I'm talking about women in development, I'd like to give a little shout out to the devChix, a group of women developers with a mission to create a community for women in development to try and make it easier for them. At RailsConf I got the chance to meet Desi and several other women in the group, and I must say it was nice to chat with other women who know how I feel.

Thanks to all the guys that were there last night voicing their opinions, and to my friend Jenna for helping me sort through my thoughts today. I am proud to be a woman in this field, and I will continue to try and prove that I belong here.