RailsConf2008

May 31, 2008

RailsConf 2008 Saturday Night Key Note: Kent Beck

I got lazy and didn't blog about DHH's key note last night.  So, before I get on with Kent's salient story-style wisdom, I'll quickly catch up with DHH's.

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May 30, 2008

Summary: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Modeling Systems

Jim Weirich, Joe O'Brien, and Chris Nelson acted out a dialog where they built an application to reserve conference rooms.  Very entertaining and novel approach for a tech conference!  I loved it.  But, to the point now - the summary...


So, you want to build something?  

Their are at least two philosophies to fleshing out the model: Traditional object-based modeling and behavior-based modeling.  How are these different?

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Yellow Pages.com Rewrite

Lessons Learned:
  • Freeze existing functionality
  • Field small, co-located, talented team (4 developers)
  • Dedicate long technology evaluation, prototyping, and planning period
  • Assign technical decision maker and communicator to management
  • Leverage UX team: all page design and HTML gen, then give to dev to slice up and wire
  • Change only the obvious
  • Deploy beta frequently and actively recruit feedback  

May 29, 2008

RailsConf 2008

Rails2008_logo_conf

I'm at RailsConf.

Portland, Oregon is, well, Portland (overcast and wet). Got in late last night and walked over to Stanford's. The service was friendly, even at 10:30 PM.  Everything about the burger was above average.  And it came with hot, crispy, slightly salty fries.  It was all devoured with sips of a local wheat bear that I forget the name of.

So far, having been away from Ruby and Rails for over a year, it feels like going back to a place you used to live. Some things are still the same. In other ways, I hardly recognize the place.  New techniques like elastic computing (and plenty of competing commercial hosting options), new tools such as git, tarantula, and hobo, etc.  Good stuff.

I'll pretend I blog and let you know how it all goes.