wroc_love.rb 2014 summary - pt2

Why have you gone there? When was it? Names, addresses, telephone numbers! Oops, that's from different case...

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome our first witness, Prograils co-owner and founder, Maciej Litwiniuk.

Maciej told us:

I really appreciate the fact, that organizers decided to make soft-skills track on the first day (or maybe day 0?). Nowadays I spend most of my time on management related tasks and programming (which I still love) gets somehow to the 2nd place. This is why for some time, during conferences, I seek mostly inspiration, not pure technical knowledge. And as most of the presentations were really good, my favorite was the one by Jeppe Liisberg - “Bringing ideas to life”. Jeppe talked about focusing on too many projects (startups) at the same time and the result of it. Failing. Still - he tried more and more, finally getting to the point, when his first start-up (MyPhoner) started to generate revenue. It was full of passion, inspiring story about trying to do something by any means and outcomes, that no one talks about. The thing to remember: “Your idea is free, execution is the King”.

As the first confession seems legit, right after Maciej comes Jędrzej Wiśniewski, brand new wind in our ruby team. We do really wonder his fresh point of view seen from the position of junior developer. What did he learn? Did he find such technical meeting comprehensible?

Let's see what Jędrzej said:

The most interesting thing I learned at the conference is that rails way isn’t the only one, and for some tasks there are better ways to do it, so after mastering my rails skills (if that ever happens :)) I have even more stuff to tackle. As a junior programmer obviously I didn’t get every technical talk and case, but I tried to focus on the ideas behind them, cause the technical knowledge will come with time. I especially liked the talk made by Michael Feathers about abstract programming ideas, because as someone who started programming with ruby I was able to see it from the different perspective and agree that the syntax of some other language isn’t weird if you don’t have some old habits (some people asked me if I don’t find ruby syntax weird as a beginner). My personal goal for the next wroclove.rb is to prepare some lightning talk, cause I think it’s a lot of fun to give a presentation, now I have to find a good topic.

That's the spirit! We hold you to your word Jędrzej and promise you the best ovation after your speech, ever! Now, let's find out feelings of experienced ruby developer Jarek Jeleniewicz. We have asked Jarek did he learn some new interesting tricks.

Jarek:

It was a great opportunity to hear some interesting ideas and socialize with other developers. Soft skills session pointed out that even if you already have a good programming skills, there are always other areas you can try to master. For example, your approach to solving complex problems by dividing them into small tasks that take less time and then combining it as the whole thing. Divide and conquer rules. On the other days I liked the idea of cross platform ruby gained with the use of ruby to JS compiler Opal and ruby to ObjectiveC compiler RubyMotion presented by Michał Taszycki in his speech "Ruby: write once, run anywhere". Rails way may have it’s problems, but it’s nice to see that ruby world is still evolving.

Fair enough. Thank you Jarek for your valuable thoughts. Now is the time to familiarize with point of view of our significant team member Tomek Błachut who plays the role of our project manager.

Tomek told us:

It was a very interesting conference, a little bit different to previous ones that praised Rails to the heavens. There were suggestions that Ruby on Rails and „the Rails way” is not perfect and the direction in which it develops may not be the way to go. I believe that this should not be considered in a negative way. These suggestions were supported by many years of speaker’s experience working with this framework and maintaining Rails applications. It should trigger discussions on how to make Rails even better.

I really enjoyed presentations from the first day, which, although started on Friday after 8 PM, hasn’t made anyone fallen asleep and charged us with positive energy for the rest of the conference. Particularly inspiring was presentation made by Jeppe Liisberg, who talked about his experiences with startups and reconciling work on them with family life. Robert Pankowecki presented an interesting approach to project management, in which the individual Project Manager is not needed or it’s role is very limited, although I hope developers will not "kick us" from the business ;)

I was very nice to see some „old faces” but also a lot of new ones. See you all next year.

Tomek, you can sleep in peace, there's no need to be worried. How could we possibly get rid our project manager? Here comes the turn to hear what another developer has to say, please welcome Piotr Boniecki.

Piotr:

From time to time we can meet people asking “Is Ruby dying?”. No, Ruby is definitely not dying. Wroclove.rb and many other conferences devoted to Ruby are the truth evidence of the fact that Ruby is not dying. Crucial projects like Opal that lets you compile Ruby code to JS or projects like Rubymotion and Ruboto that runs Ruby language in mobile devices based on iOS or Android are another evidence of that fact. Michał Taszycki in his presentation “Ruby – write once, run anywhere” told about technologies that allows using the same code with the mobile apps, on the side of server and on client side as a JS. Even though this technology is young it is easy to use – Michał proved it by creating and presenting application, that based on the same code, works both in the mobile and web environment. With such perspectives the future of the ruby can be brighter and brighter.

Another thing, Ruby on Rails isn't dying. It might appear so, considering the criticism about defects of this framework that lately has been spread (also on wroclove.rb 2014 conference). But still, this criticism gives the evidence that real interesting in Ruby on Rails is all the time enormous. And, in my opinion, it will last for a long time. As for those defects, I think that all you have to do is to be aware of them and to know, which components shouldn't be used in particular situations, right as “The Rails Way” says.

Btw, have you heard of the game called 2048?

I can highly recommend it to you! :)

Thank you Piotr for your valuable statement. Also, thanks for those long minutes spent in the 2048 :)

Let's find out what out multi-tasked developer, Leszek Smentek has to say:

Leszek:

For me, the conference turned out to be very interesting. The range of issues was quite wide: starting from project management through practical wisdom connected with implementing ideas into life, ending with concepts far exceeding the concept of ruby and ruby on rails and have applications not only in web applications. Presentations showing practical problems and the ways of solving them haven't been forgotten. I'm personally happy that there are people who shows that sometimes there are projects that can be taken care of not only by ruby, but also different tools. It proves that you can step far beyond the convention and sometimes doing so is the best solution.

And finally, the last, but not least opinion, straight from Rafał Trojanowski, tallented Ruby on Rails developer:

Rafał:

Piotr Szotkowskipresented the new player on the scene of tests (Bogus) taking into consideration the legitimacy of writing too many software tests. Thanks a lot!

I think this is going to bring nothing but effects in the near future and out tests will become even faster. What is more, I do still keep in mind the presentation of Piotr Solnica “Microlibraries FTW”, whose open source activity I will be attentively watch looking for better solutions. The conference was a great success and a great experience. Congratulations!

So, that's that. We have heard the confession of every wroclove.rb eyewitness. To each, his own. We're definitely looking forward to see you next year!

Oh, there's one relevant question we have asked everyone: How long would you regret not having participated the wroclove.rb 2014 conference at all? The answer was unanimous: "Long!"

(credits: photo from wrocloverb.com)