Ruby on Rails Conference and Ruby on Rails Workshops

Dave AstelsApril 13, 01:45pm - 03:15pm

Dave Astels (co-author of "A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming" and author of Jolt Award winning "Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide") has over 2 decades of experience in the software field, most of that involved with object-oriented technologies and techniques. Dave has been studying, practicing, teaching, evangelising, and coaching XP and Agile Processes since 1998. Dave\'s experience ranges from embedded process control systems to consumer products (both consumer electronics and shrinkwrapped software) to energy trading systems. Dave is an independant software consultant specializing in the areas of agile process, programming practices, and object design/architecture. Dave attends, and speaks at, a variety of conferences including the XP conference in Europe, JAOO, SD West, SD Best Practices, XPAU, Smalltalk Solutions, and OOPSLA. Dave is one of the thought leaders in the area of TDD, and now BDD.

Behaviour Driven Development.. the step after TDD

Test Driven Development (TDD) has made it to prime time. Big companies are paying big money to have their programmers trained in how to do TDD. It's a popular topic at conferences... agile and otherwise. TDD books are winning Jolt awards. So everything's rosy, huh? Fat Chance! What's wrong? Well... one thing is that people think it's about testing. That's just not the case. Then what's it about? It's about figuring out what you are trying to do before you run off half-cocked to try to do it. This session will introduce Behaviour Driven Development.. the step after TDD.

David BlackApril 13, 04:30pm - 05:30pm

David A. Black, Ph.D., has been writing in and about Ruby for over five years, and developing Rails applications since 2004. He is a founding director of the non-profit organization Ruby Central, Inc., which produces both the annual International Ruby Conference ("RubyConf") , now heading into its sixth year, and the International Rails Conference, scheduled to debut in June, 2006. David's book "Ruby for Rails: Ruby techniques for Rails developers" is due out from Manning Publications this Spring.

David is the chief author of Ruby's standard scanf library, the creator and maintainer of the Rails-based Ruby Change Request Archive ("RCRchive"), and the chief developer of the Rails applications behind the Ruby FAQ. He contributed three chapters ("days") to "Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days" (Sams, 2001). He is a frequent participant on the ruby-talk mailing list and the #ruby-lang IRC channel (freenode.net).

Ruby and the Rails Developer: Breaking Through the Programming Glass Ceiling

The question often comes up: do you need to master Ruby in order to use Rails? The short answer is: yes. The longer answer, which will be elaborated in this talk, is: you can get Rails applications up and running with a fairly minimal grasp of Ruby; but mastering Ruby is greatly to your benefit as a Rails developer.

Learning Ruby thoroughly offers at least three major benefits:

1. knowing the actual meaning of what you're doing (as opposed to wondering what the "has_one" in "has_one :engine" actually is, or why you have to stick an at-sign in front of some variable names and not others)

2. knowing how to do more: extending your models programmatically, taking advantage of the ways that Rails is engineered for the enrichment of applications through custom Ruby code (for example, the very existence of a whole directory for "helper" files, in which you're supposed to put your own code)

3. gaining the ability to understand the Rails framework source code, which in turn means that you can participate more meaningfully in discussions, and perhaps even submit patches This talk will expand on each of these points, using specific examples to illustrate and support the general case that Rails developers can, indeed, benefit from a thorough understanding of Ruby techniques and idioms -- even those that are not usually thought of as directly pertaining to Rails programming conventions.

Thomas FuchsApril 14, 08:00am - 09:30am

Thomas Fuchs is a software architect from Vienna, Austria. He\'s been building web applications since 1996. Thomas is the author of script.aculo.us, a cross-browser JavaScript framework featuring advanced Ajax UI controls, visual effects and other niceties, and a core development team member of the Ruby on Rails web development framework. He\'s also a contributor to Prototype, an object-oriented Ajax/JavaScript framework.

Advanced Rails AJAX techniques

AJAX is a driving technological factor behind the current trend in convergence of web and desktop applications, and Ruby on Rails is the premier framework for implementing AJAX-powered web applications. Go beyond the basics and learn how to use the Rails Prototype and Script.aculo.us helpers to full potential. Implement effective multiple-element updates, drag & drop and other UI controls and make use of plug-ins to achieve a desktop application-like intuitive user experience while adhering to web standards.

James AdamApril 14, 09:45am - 10:45am

James Adam is a Rails programmer working as part of a five-man team developing applications for a major media buyer with high-profile blue-chip clients. He developed Rails Engines to assist in the rapid development of client-oriented software whilst supporting team-based development of common application infrastructure.

After graduating with a First-Class Honours degree in Artificial Intelligence in 2000, he spent 4 years researching Emergent Behaviour in Multiagent System for his PhD in computer science. He has been using Ruby for development full-time since 2002, and following Rails since it's first public release.

Engines: Team Development with Rails

Rails Engines provide a means to share common functionality across many projects, in a package that's easy to both update *and* override.

This presentation will explain the concepts behind Engines and demonstrate how they work within a Rails application. I will also discuss how Engines has dramatically enhanced collaboration within our own development team, and how such collaboration can be extended into the Rails community as a whole.

Joe O'brienApril 13, 11:00am - 12:00pm

Joe O'Brien is a developer with ThoughtWorks, an organization with a history of successfully building enterprise applications using Agile Development. He has spent my career as a developer, project manager, and everything in between. His passion for open source technologies and development has been strong since he began his IT career. Joe is very active in the open source community and local users groups. Recently, he founded the Columbus Ruby Brigade and have helped organize the Chicago Area Ruby Users Group.

His passions are Agile Development in the Enterprise, Ruby, and demonstrating to the Fortune 500 the elegance and power of this incredible language. Joe is currently working on a book for the Pragmatic Programmers on Ruby and SOA.

Enterprise SOA with Rails

Use the world's best platform for web development inside the enterprise. I show how developers can harness the power of Rails for web development, without having to rewrite all of their legacy .NET and Java applications. I get them to work together in a symphony of messages in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Taking items directly from my upcoming book, I demonstrate how a developer would take the Rails Depot application (created in Agile Web Development with Rails) and tie it into an existing Java inventory system using SOA. SOA is something previously only discussed by architects and sales people. I bring SOA down to the developers, cutting through the marketing-mess and getting to what's important: creating a loosely-coupled, highly available enterprise system.

David Heinemeier HanssonApril 13, 09:15am - 10:45am

David Heinemeier Hansson is the creator of Ruby on Rails and technical honcho for 37signals. Between leading an open-source community to glory and cranking out hit applications like Basecamp and Backpack, David enjoys igniting passion and ire with his thoughts on software and product development.

Where will Rails be riding next?

Examining the history and future of Ruby on Rails from a technical and cultural perspective. Where is all this going and why? Including re-runs of beloved rants, such as "why logic in the database is evil", "how components will make your brain go mushy", and other favorite tales from the land of righteous indignation.

For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Nathaniel Brown toll free in North America (877) 446-4648, internationally (604) 724-6624, or by email nshb@osevents.com.

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