DABlog

First things first:

In case you haven’t heard about it, I’m very excited to report that I am teaming up with two other Ruby programmer-authors, namely:

• Gregory Brown, author of Ruby Best Practices, and
• Jeremy McAnally, author of Ruby in Practice

to present The Compleat Rubyist, a two-day Ruby training event in Tampa, Florida, January 22-23 2010.

The idea behind the event

It all started with the books.

We got the idea of doing some kind of joint project because our books (including the two above, plus my book, The Well-Grounded Rubyist) complement each other really nicely. My book is a language tutorial. Jeremy’s book (to which both Greg and I contributed) contains advice about using Ruby in a series of application contexts. Greg’s book makes a different kind of pass through the language, with an eye to idiomatic, productive techniques.

A training event seemed like the perfect collaborative effort. We’ve designed an unusual format, optimized for in-depth learning and for a workshop/hands-on style.

Who’s it for?

I’ve been training Ruby programmers for years, and I can tell you that it’s very common to become quite good at Ruby but still have room for getting deeper into how things work, what the best practices are, and other areas.

I’d say that’s the “sweet spot” for our attendees: people who have been using Ruby, and want to go further in their understanding and skills.

Does that mean intermediate? advanced? talented beginner?

Hard to say. I’d like to think that almost any Ruby programmer can get something out of spending two days with us. (And we’re hoping to get a lot out of it too.) We’re not that concerned with pinpointing a level. Have a look at the event description, and decide whether it sounds good for you.

See you there, we hope!

We’re happy to field questions, if you have any. There’s a contact link on the event website, as well as links for registering and for more info about the venue.

The answer is…yes! I did mention it. But I’ll mention it again.

Want to learn Ruby, and learn it right?

Come to Atlanta for three days and learn Ruby from:

• me (author of Ruby for Rails, The Well-Grounded Rubyist, and other stuff; long-time Ruby programmer; one of the most experienced Ruby trainers on the planet)
• Jeremy McAnally (“mrneighborly”, author of Ruby in Practice, creator of the Ruby Hoedown (annual conference))
• Rick Olson (“technoweenie”, member of the Rails core team; plugin writer extraordinaire)

You gotta better way to learn Ruby?

I doubt it. Just read that list of instructors again… and you get training materials, a book (“Ruby in Practice”), and lunches.

There’s registration info here, and you can contact me directly with any questions.

Hope to see you there!

P.S. If you’re a Ruby expert but have friends or co-workers or employees who could use an accelerated intro/intermediate course, send them along!

I got home yesterday from RailsConf Europe 2008 in Berlin, and am very happy to say that the event was a major success.

It was particularly gratifying to hear from many attendees that they found the program content more advanced and more instructive than last year. It’s always hard to fine-tune the level of talks across a big program like this, and I’m really glad to have evidence that people overall felt it had gone in the right direction.

Highlights included keynote addresses by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jeremy Kemper, as well as a Rails core team panel discussion with David, Jeremy, and Michael Koziarski. DHH led us through some very interesting thoughts on the notion of “legacy” code, and how that concept plays out with respect to one’s own development and growth as a programmer. Jeremy talked about performance, and masterfully expanded the horizon beyond the shop-worn “Does Rails scale?” stuff to some very specific and powerful techniques for evaluating and adjusting performance.

We also held a “Symposimi” (the name is based on a misspelling in the program; it should have been “Symposium” but came out “Symposimi,” and I decided that sounded really cool!) on the subject of Ruby versions and implementations—who’s using what, what’s targeting what, the pros and cons of moving to 1.8.7 and/or 1.9. A symposimi is a town-meeting-like gathering of people who want to ask and answer questions about a topic. It’s more audience-based than a symposium, and less hierarchical.

The symposimi was fun for me because I got to do some live code demos, which I usually don’t at the conferences I’m an organizer of!

Lots of people asked about next year. We don’t know yet where RailsConf Europe will be in 2009. Probably not Berlin, just because we’d like to move it around. If you have suggestions (and a rationale other than that you happen to live there :-) by all means let me know.

Now that RCE2008 is over, I’m looking forward to RubyConf. Stay tuned for announcements of the program and registration!

As you may already know, the first RailsConf Europe was a big success. Ruby Central had the easy job: we were in on the planning at a fairly general level, and we chose the talks. Credit for actually arranging and running the even goes to Wendy Devolder and her team at Skills Matter, the London-based training company that teamed up with us for this event.

I didn’t go to as many talks as I would have liked to, as I was doing event-related things much of the time; but I went to all the keynotes and enough sessions to be very impressed. I was also taking mental notes on the fact that the keynotes, which were attended by about 300 people, didn’t feel like they were mobbed or overcrowded. This has a bearing on my thoughts about the upcoming RubyConf 2006, which is going to have upward of 300 people in attendance and one track.

I’m now in Copenhagen, having given a Rails workshop in Malmo, Sweden, yesterday. The workshop, hosted by Polar Rose, went very well. Afterwards I checked into my hotel in Copenhagen; and as I was getting in to the elevator, I heard a voice call, “David!” Usually it’s safe to ignore that, in cities where you don’t know anyone, since it probably isn’t you—but in this case it was me, and the person calling me was David Heinemeier Hansson. He’s staying at the same hotel, it turned out.

And I, and I think also DHH, will be going to tomorrow evening’s meeting of the Copenhagen Ruby Brigade, which I’m looking forward to a lot.

I’m going to be conducting a free (but limited enrollment) Ruby on Rails workshop in Malmo, Sweden, on September 17th.

Details the Polar Rose website.