Sessions
WindyCityRails 2009 is a one-day conference packed with seven sessions, two in-depth tutorials, and an all-day coding dojo sponsored by Obtiva. View the schedule to see how things will come together.
Obtiva Coding Dojo
At WindyCityRails, we believe conferences should provide more diverse ways of interacting with our peers. The purpose of a coding dojo is to provide a means for practicing solid coding techniques in a low-stress, no-pressure environment with other people in our community. What better way to learn about test-driven development, design patterns and becoming a better programmer in general than by sitting down and trying it out with a peer. The Obtiva Coding Dojo will be available all day.
Tutorials
Our tutorials are exciting opportunities for in-depth learning. Each nearly three-hour session will run alongside our regular sessions. Tutorials will take place in an intimate, classroom-style environment with no more than 30 attendees. Tutorials require a premium ticket level for admission. You'll be asked to register for a specific tutorial upon purchasing your ticket.
REST 101: Best Practices for Rails Applications
Jeff Cohen, Purple Workshops
The sweet spot of Rails applications is centered around the concept of “RESTful” development. This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Rails framework to develop RESTful applications. Developers who are new to Rails, and even some who have been developing Rails applications for some time, will benefit from this tutorial. Particular attention will be given to topics for those who have recently switched to Rails from .NET or Java. Along the way, we'll also be learning about many of the foundational concepts in Rails, from routes and actions, to template generators and caching strategies.
About the Instructor
Jeff Cohen has been writing about Ruby on Rails since 2005 for Softies on Rails, a resource for all newcomers to Rails and the Ruby programming language. In 2008 he started the Purple Workshops to provide friendly training classes for those switching to Rails. He has appeared on the official Ruby on Rails Podcast, is a Rails core contributor, and is co-author of the Pragmatic Bookshelf book Rails for .NET Developers. Jeff lives and works just outside of Chicago, Illinois. He's married and has two wonderful daughters. His favorite sport is hockey, his favorite comic strip is Calvin & Hobbes, and he thinks his jokes are funnier than they really are.
Writing Software that Matters: Behaviour Driven Rails with RSpec and Cucumber
David Chelimsky, Articulated Man
Behaviour Driven Development has been around for a few years now, and is the subject of much exploration throughout the internets. In this tutorial session we're going to cut through the noise and focus on solid techniques and tools like pair programming, working from the outside in, writing Cucumber features and RSpec code examples, webrat, stubs, mocks, test data builders, and refactoring.
This is a hands on, skills development workshop, so please bring your laptops and be ready to write some code. While attendees are not expected to be experts with any of these tools and techniques, you are expected to have at least a basic working knowledge of Ruby, Ruby on Rails, RSpec, and Cucumber.
About the Instructor
David Chelimsky is the lead developer/maintainer of RSpec and author of The RSpec Book. He has been developing software professionally for nearly a decade, and exploring TDD for over five of those years. After three years training and mentoring agile teams at Object Mentor, David now leads the software development team at Articulated Man, a Chicago based, interactive design firm. In his spare time, David likes to play guitar, travel, and speak something resembling Portuguese.
Regular Sessions
Each regular session will run 45-minutes in length, with breaks in between to allow for plenty of networking opportunities. Sessions will cover a wide variety of topics, promising to satisfy both developers and designers of all skill levels.
Better Ruby through Functional Programming
Dean Wampler, Object Mentor, Inc.
Functional Programming (FP) has become popular as the most robust way to write concurrent applications. Functional ideas improve code in other ways, like reducing coupling between “elements” and eliminating some “surprises” that occur when objects are mutable. We’ll discuss the key ideas in functional programming and the functional features that Ruby already supports. We’ll describe how best to use these features and how to work around the missing functional features.
About the Speaker
Dean Wampler is a Senior Consultant, Mentor, and Trainer at Object Mentor, Inc. Dean has been writing enterprise software in Ruby and … <cough> … Java for over a decade. He is a language geek. He wrote the Aquarium library for Ruby and he is currently co-writing a book on Scala for O'Reilly. Dean speaks frequently at industry and academic conferences on Ruby, Scala, Java, and software design topics.
Super-easy PDF Generation with Prawn and Prawnto
John McCaffrey, Pathfinder Development
What is the best way to integrate PDFs into your Rails applications? This presentation will begin with a comparison of popular PDF generation libraries, including Prawn and Prawnto. The talk will cover basic capabilities and syntax, followed by sample code and a live demo. Finally, the presenter will share his real world experience writing tests and helpers to support PDF generation.
About the Speaker
John McCaffrey serves as Project Manager/Team Lead at Pathfinder Development. John has almost a decade of web development experience, lots of Java/Struts/SpringMVC, and now he absolutely loves Ruby/Rails. His professional experience includes big companies like CSC, Kraft, and Quaker/Pepsi, as well as smaller companies like Adeptia, G2Switchworks, and Pathfinder. John specializes on front-end development and testing. He's an amateur photographer, so you might see him walking around WindyCityRails with a camera.
“Comics” Is Hard: On Domains and Databases
Ben Scofield, Viget Labs
It sometimes seems like all domains easily map onto relational database like MySQL and Postgres — that we live in a happy land where all Employees are People, and all People are Mammals. Unfortunately, however, there are many domains that just don't map so easily onto a standard relational schema. In this session, we'll look at three general alternatives to the familiar model, as illustrated by some specific examples. We'll also see how some alternative databases provide a better fit for specific domains.
About the Speaker
Ben Scofield is the Technology Director for Viget Labs, where he uses his experience working with startups like Squidoo and ODEO and his expertise in Ruby, Rails, and other technologies to help new businesses get on the right track. In addition to speaking at various conferences (including Rubyconf, Railsconf, and Railsconf Europe) and authoring Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects for Apress, he has recently begun organizing local, technology-agnostic events around the US in order to bring together developers across platforms and languages. When at home, he reads voraciously and spends time with his wife and young daughter.
UI Fundamentals for Programmers
Ryan Singer, 37signals
Ryan will explain the key concepts you should understand to design and implement UI for your apps. He’ll cover screen-level details like language and visual techniques as well as deeper topics like modeling and best practices for coding templates and helpers.
About the Speaker
Ryan Singer is a UI designer and Product Manager at 37signals. Ryan was a freelance web designer before joining 37signals in 2003. Within his first year, 37signals began to transition from a design consultancy to a web-based software company with the release of Basecamp. Ryan’s innovative work has since set a standard for web-app usability and design. He lives in Chicago with his wife and french bulldog.
How To Test Absolutely Anything
Noel Rappin, Pathfinder Development
Here it is, a one stop, rapid-fire tour through the very best and most useful testing tools and tricks that the Rails ecosystem has to offer. This one is not about testing theory, it's about getting testing done quickly and efficiently without re-inventing the wheel.
About the Speaker
Noel Rappin is the Vice President of Rails Development at Pathfinder Development. He is the author of Professional Ruby on Rails from Wrox and Rails Test Prescriptions: Keeping your application healthy, available at railsprescriptions.com. He has over a decade of experience in web application development. Noel is the co-author of wxPython in Action and O’Reilly’s Jython Essentials.
Optimizing Perceived Performance
David Eisinger, Viget Labs
As Phil Karlton said, “there are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.” Despite enormous advances in the field of web development over the last five years, it remains difficult to use caching to allow sites to scale for expanding user bases. Fortunately, the last few years have also seen the rise of JavaScript libraries that take a lot of the pain out of client-side programming. In this talk, we’ll explore techniques for making your sites feel faster, without resorting to complicated caching schemes, while maintaining strict separation of content, style, and behavior.
About the Speaker
David is a web developer at Viget Labs, building web applications for companies ranging from startups to established brands, as well as internal and open source projects. After several years as a PHP developer, he made the switch to Ruby in 2006 and hasn’t looked back. He specializes in Ruby on Rails, jQuery, and RESTful web services. A Washington, DC native, David now lives and works in Durham, NC. He writes online at http://www.viget.com/extend and http://www.davideisinger.com.
Rails 3 Update
Yehuda Katz, Engine Yard
As a member of the Rails core team and lead developer of the Merb project, Yeuda Katz is in a unique position to discuss the merger of these two Ruby frameworks. Yehuda will begin his talk with an update on Rails 3 followed by a vigorous and engaging Q&A session.
About the Speaker
Yehuda Katz is a member of the Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Teams, and spends close to every waking moment hacking on open source. He is the co-author of jQuery in Action, and author of the upcoming Rails 3 in Action. During the daylight hours, he's employed by Engine Yard, where his team works full time on Rails. During the evening hours, he's, well, generally also hacking. He spends weekends traveling, speaking at events and companies with people looking to learn more about any of the technologies he loves. And, when not doing any of those things, you can find him at a bookstore or theater debating sci-fi, technology and dinner plans with his wife.
