Sessions
WindyCityRails 2010 is a one-day conference packed with six seven sessions, lightning talks, two in-depth tutorials, and an all-day coding dojo. View the schedule to see how things will come together.
Obtiva Coding Dojo
The Obtiva Coding Dojo provides 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.
Lightning Talks
Get quick shots of Rails knowledge in our lightning talks. We'll cover a variety of topics in a short amount of time. Lightning talks will run between 3 to 7 minutes in length. Any registered WindyCityRails attendee will have the opportunity to submit a lightning talk proposal. Stay tuned!
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.
Getting Started with Ruby on Rails
Jeff Cohen, Purple Workshops
This is a beginner-friendly, come-as-you-are workshop for getting started with Ruby on Rails. This workshop will help you get started writing Rails applications. We’ll be learning about many of the foundational concepts in Rails, from routes and actions, to forms and models. If you’re new to web programming, and just don’t know how to begin, this is the perfect chance to become familiar with what Rails has to offer in a friendly, non-intimidating environment. If you’re switching to Rails from a .NET or Java background, this workshop will help you “comparison shop” for the features and techniques you’re looking for.
- Intro to HTTP concepts, and what “REST” is all about
- How to route a URL to your web page code
- How to use the built-in code generators
- How to embed Ruby code into your HTML templates
- Introduction to understanding templates, partials, and layouts
- How to use a database inside your application
- Understanding the heart of Rails: its MVC architecture
- How to write web services with Rails
- Tips for debugging and using the Rails console
- How to use Javascript/jQuery in your pages
- Recommneded best practices for all Rails developers
About the Version of Rails We Will Use in the Workshop We’ll be using the most up-to-date, production version of Rails that’s available at the time of the class. Hopefully that means Rails 3.0, but might mean Rails 2.3. If Rails 3.0 has not been released by the time of the workshop, we will be sure to highlight the main differences between 2.3 and 3.0 so that everyone will be prepared to use Rails 3.0 when it comes out.
About the Speaker
Jeff Cohen has been writing about Ruby on Rails since 2005, starting with the popular “Softies on Rails” blog, followed by the Pragmatic book “Rails for .NET Developers” in 2008. Jeff is the founder of purpleworkshops.com, offering beginner-friendly workshops on a variety of topics. Jeff has appeared on the official Ruby on Rails Podcast, as well as the Alt.NET and HerdingCode podcasts. Find his daily tips for Rails developers at @rails101 on twitter, and on the web at Rails101.com.
Testing in a Legacy Environment
Noel Rappin, Obtiva
Everybody wants to do test-driven development, but switching to TDD/BDD on an existing project that doesn’t have tests presents special challenges. Participants in this tutorial will be given a legacy project as base code, and the tutorial will walk through how to safely add test coverage to the codebase without breaking anything there that might already work. Topics covered will include: using Cucumber to perform black-box testing, using mocks to isolate legacy code, safer refactoring by finding seams, measuring coverage, adding new features to the existing code using TDD. This tutorial will be hands-on and full of practical advice that you can take back to your daily work.
About the Speaker
Noel Rappin is a Senior Consultant at Obtiva, and the author of multiple technical books including Rails Test Prescriptions from the Pragmatic Press.
Regular Sessions
Each regular session will run 45-minutes in length, with breaks in between to allow for plenty of networking opportunities.
Metrics Based Refactoring: What To Do With Your Code Metrics
Jake Scruggs, Backstop Solutions Group
Metric_fu makes it easy to generate reports that measure code quality. Once you’ve created the reports, what do you do next? You know your code could be better. Now what? As lead developer of metric_fu, Jake Scruggs is in a great position to make recommendations about the best ways to leverage the tool.
About the Speaker
Jake Scruggs is a former high school physics teacher, ThoughtWorker, Obtivian, and now a developer at Backstop Solutions and wearer of crazy shirts.
Analyzing and Improving the Performance of your Rails Application
John McCaffrey, Independent Consultant
Ruby is a great language, and Rails is an amazing framework, but with all that you get for free, it can be easy to build in bottlenecks and poorly performing code. There are a lot of resources out there on performance. This talk will focus on the critical things you should look at first, up to the more advanced changes you may need to consider to make your app fly.
About the Speaker
John McCaffrey has been doing web development for over 13yrs, but the real fun started when he got his first taste of Rails! John has presented at WindyCityRails, covering ‘Javascript Testing, and advanced Firebug’ in 2008, and “PDF Generation in Rails” in 2009. Since then, John has become obsessed with improving the performance of Rails applications, researching and applying all the tools and techniques to figure out how to make an app scream. You can follow the latest findings.
It’s Time to Repay Your Debt
Kevin Gisi, Intridea
As members of the Ruby on Rails community, we’ve taken advantage of a wonderful framework, fantastic libraries, and enjoyed the company of other great, creative minds. But it’s important to make sure we give back! In this talk, we’ll look at how we can start to release our own libraries. We’ll look at how we can manage our open-source contributions, to make sure that we don’t alienate new developers. Finally, we’ll see just how easy it is to provide support for the next generation of Ruby on Rails enthusiasts and coders!
About the Speaker
Kevin W. Gisi is a developer from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where we works remotely as an engineer for Intridea. Kevin is the co-founder of the Eau Claire Ruby User Group, one of the organizers for the Rails Rumble event, and an active evangelist for open-source software and test-driven development. In affiliation with ECRuby, Kevin helped organize and promote the first Chippewa Valley Ruby Camp—an all-day immersion event to introduce developers to the Ruby language.
Lunch
Various Speakers,
You’ve filled your brain, now fill your stomach! Join us in Ballroom C, or grab your lunch and head outside to enjoy Chicago’s beautiful riverfront while you eat.
About the Speaker
Lightning Talks
Various Speakers,
TBA
Testing iPhone App Sync by Kevin Zolkiewicz
About the Speaker
Weaving Design and Development
Ryan Singer, 37signals
How can designers and developers work together to produce the best software? At which stage should designers and developers be involved? Who holds the domain knowledge? How can a software project accommodate new insights on the UI and code as it evolves? Ryan will share his experiences working on both the design and code ends of projects at 37signals and discuss strategies for connecting the two sides. He’ll also open the microphones up to the audience to hear your thoughts and experiences.
About the Speaker
Ryan Singer is Product Manager and Lead UI Designer at 37signals. Since 2003, his interface and software designs for 37signals have pushed the standards of web application usability and clarity. Ryan is an internationally recognized speaker on interface design and web software production. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two french bulldogs.
Grease your Suite: Tips and Tricks for Faster Testing
Nick Gauthier, SmartLogic Solutions
Continuous integration is a great way to keep your codebase organized and well tested. But when a test suite takes so long to run that developers stop running it before every commit, they lose their constant feedback loop and quality drops. In this talk we’ll explore methods of speeding up the test suite so that developers can be confident about the code they’ve written before they share it with the team. Every tactic will be backed up with hard benchmarks from real production code. We’ll show the evolution of a test suite from its full run time of 13m 15s down to a number you won’t believe.
About the Speaker
Nick Gauthier is a developer and technical lead at SmartLogic Solutions, a Baltimore web development company. He’s been using linux on the desktop for almost a decade now, and started coding rails two years ago. He’s an active attendee and occasional speaker at Bmore on Rails. He’s developed a number of performance-obsessed ruby gems, like slow-actions, multitest, and hydra.
Sustainably Awesome: How to Build a Team
Les Hill & Jim Remsik, Hashrocket
Hashrocket began as a small four person shop aiming to build products and get rich doing the same. Something happened along the way and we wound up with a small principled consultancy that works hard and plays harder.
Listen in as we share how we keep the culture, quality, and cohesive bond that makes Rocketeers love working for Hashrocket. We will cover hiring, communications, methodology, environment, culture, and community.
About the Speaker
Les Hill, one of the earliest Rocketeers, has moved heaven and earth writing rocket-science software at a stealthy security firm, developed one of the web’s first AJAX applications, and written core algorithms for scale-free peer-to-peer networks. Les has spoken at technical conferences, occasionally co-hosts the Ruby5 podcast, and blogs about Ruby and software development.
Jim Remsik’s path to software development began in a printing apprenticeship that taught him basic Photoshop skills. Subsequent hacking through HTML tutorials and the Github of it’s time – Matt’s Script Archive – eventually led to nearly a decade in Government web work in Microsoft technologies. No longer happy with the technology or the work, he tinkered with Ruby and Rails until he found the right opportunity writing excellent software and enjoying it.
What’s New With Rails 3
Yehuda Katz, Engine Yard
In this talk, Yehuda will give an overview of the new features of Rails 3, and how you can use them today in your day-to-day work on Rails. He’ll also talk about the steps you can take to most efficiently update a Rails 2.3 app to Rails 3.
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. 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.
