Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Rails Conf 2009 Day 2 - DHH Keynote

Rails Conf Day 2 start with DHH's keynote. The room was packed (close to 1200 attendees) and SRO. It was interesting to know that 70% of the attendees are first timers and only a handful have attended for all 4 years in a row. This is my second in the US.

Here are the notes from DHH's keynotes:

• Stop fretting about whether you are upto date with the latest in Rails. Don't need to re-write your application everytime something new comes up.
• Gallery of "normal wounds"
• Rails isn't enterprise ready, James McGovern "some consutant, architect, or bullshit title of a big company". Can't win the world with better arguments, some things take time.
• Multiple frameworks like Grails, Sails, Biscuit, Monorail seem to give the impression Java is easier
• Switch back to PHP after 2 years on Rails y Derik Severs (sp?)
• The failed whale, "the twitter debacle" that Rails doesn't scale.
• Merb - "the most credible alternative to Rails". Even though emotions can run high, the underlying principles are still the same.
• Fundamental principle of Rails are still the same, it's better and faster
• Philosophy of Rails3
• Buck up all the unicorns - it's not going to be a rewrite f everything
• No holy cows - "There is nothing secret in Rails, everything is up for public debate"
• Have tasty burgers: it's all pre-assembled and use it the default way, otherwise pick/choose whatever you like. Allow people to make individual choices and still be together in one community.
• Progress of Rails 3 - Ton of Rails 3 code in the repository, no alpha release
• New Router: Faster route by subdomains, user agents, more Route to other Rack machinery. Mount multiple applications like Sinatra and Django using this router. Much simpler routing API. "Ruby is not about fewer lines of code, it's about expressive lines of code."
• XSS protection: Flipping the convention such that all outputting views will be escaped, so "<%=raw" will not escape it and "<%" will escape it by default. HTML helpers "html_safe" may be used too.
• JavaScript goes unobstrusive and agnostic: Will adopt HTML 5 custom attributes such as "data-remote" and "data-method" attribtues will simplify "link_to_remote", "remote_form", "link_to".
• More agnosticism: Action ORM is a slim wrapper around other ORM tools, Generators (SoC project)
• Great refactoring (bulk of the work): Abstract Controller + Action Dispatch, Active Relation (also GSoC project) underpins Active Record, Cherry picking from Active Support, Speedy callbacks
• Real secret to high productivity
• Most developers treat requirements as stone tablets, don't treat requirements as gospel, instead renegotiate requirements.
• Use Twix instead of a fine Belgian chocolate, it doesn't really matter most of the time.
• Programmers are like puppies who want to fetch the same ball again and again, bark back instead
• Calling people programmer is like a blackbox, we are not those boxes. Instead we should be treated as partners, work with our stakeholders to get the job done.

Posted by Arun Gupta in General  |  Comments[4]