Geek Mama

Tuesday Morning Session Notes

November 18th, 2008

The Voices That Matter conference is a single track conference emphasizing short 30 minute presentations that give you a taste of a variety of topics.  Not enough time to take away more than just an overview of the latest topics in the industry.  But I’m finding it very stimulating to be in a room of truly geeky application developers.

Obie Fernandez gave a really interesting keynote talk about agile development methods at HashRocket (=>).His talk totally made you want to work there.  In particular, he mentioned an interesting product they use called PivotalTracker which is a story-based project planning tool that facilitates team collaboration.  We’ve been using Redmine lately at SBW but I really liked the look and feel of PivotalTracker.  Also of note is HashRocket’s commitment to Pair Programming: 2 people in front of one computer, 2 keyboards, 2 mice.

Ben Koski spoke about his rails shop at the NY Times.  I had a dear friend working there last year who hated the experience due to horrible office politics.  Ben mentioned in passing that his team works the same hours as the newspaper industry which sounds really very grueling and un-family friendly.

Thomas Enebo, Co-Lead for the JRuby Project claims that there is no need to know java… JRuby is “just Ruby”.  Not being a native Java developer, I haven’t found a use for JRuby yet.  Everything I’ve needed so far can be found in core or a plug-in/gem.  But perhaps JRuby makes java converts and the unfortunates working on legacy systems more at ease.

Matt Pelletier introduced us to Mongrel.  We’ve implemented Passenger at SBW, but unfortunately I haven’t had time to play with it myself.  Can you call yourself a geek when you shy away from server configuration toys?

Coby Randquist from YellowPages.com says that the community is the reason why he devlops in ruby.  AT&T Interactive promotes community participation.  If I wanna be a RoR Rockstar I’m going to need to involve myself more in community activities starting with getting back to attending Boston Ruby Group.

Entry Filed under: Ruby on Rails