Aloha RubyConf: What I Want to Talk About

Aloha Ruby Conference is just around the corner and I hope you’ll be joining me this year. Some of you might think Honolulu is too far to travel for a conference. Well, to you I say “THBPBPTHPT!”

I am fortunate enough to actually live here in paradise! I recently moved from Baltimore and I’ve been pretty starved for some good nerdy conversation. Come on, let’s get a Mai Tai and talk shop a bit. Here are some topics I want to hear more about:

Decoupled Architectures

There has been a lot of recent discussion about decoupling core application logic from Rails. I am totally enamoured of this idea and I want to learn what people are doing. What has worked well and (more importantly, in my opinion) what didn’t work and why not?

In addition to modularity, there has also been a lot of discussion about decoupled applications. How are you breaking up your apps: engines, libraries, services? I have some experience in this arena; let’s share horror stories.

Check out James Rosen’s and Charles Max Wood’s talks if you want hear about SOA.

Testing

I think that right now is a kind of renaissance for test-writing Rubyists. I’m seeing a lot of lessons and skills being brought over from the Java community and I think it’s great. How many of your colleagues have recommended you read GOOS? To how many colleagues have you recommended it? What about Sandi Metz’s awesome new book? Did Gary Bernhardt’s screencasts change your approach to testing?

Cory Haines is giving a talk called “Yay! Mocks!” Need I say more? Yes, I’ll see you there.

Concurrency

If we’re in a testing renaissance, then we’re in the golden age of concurrency. The practicing Rubyist has more options for concurrency than ever before, so this topic demands a deep look. We live in a universe where nginx can speak HTTP 1.1 to our apps, where process concurrency is a joy with Unicorn, where EventMachine gives our IO-bound applications the reactor they crave, where JRuby and Rubinius give us true threaded concurrency, and where countless libraries like Celluloid fill in the gaps.

Honestly, can’t decide between Charles Nutter’s talk and Konstantin Haase’s. Jerry Cheung is going to learn us some evented concurrency.