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by David Heinemeier Hansson.
Original Post: Decompressing RailsConf Europe
Feed Title: Loud Thinking
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Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp
What an amazing two days! Such an overwhelmingly good experience. Not that I expected the official European RailsConf to be a tame affair, but I frankly hadn't expected this level of quality, intimacy, and breadth. There were so many good talks, so many enthusiastic people, and so many truly impressive projects being showcased.
I personally had the good fun of talking about the next step in our theme of Simply Something. First, I gave a working demonstration of Active Resource and how it'll immediately work with the forthcoming resources_scaffold. Wrapping up Simply RESTful by showing all the thoughts from RailsConf Chicago converted into live, working code.
Then I got to show off Simply Helpful. Our intent to bring conventions and simplifications to the world of the view. From div_for(person) to render(:partial => @people) to link_to(:name, person). Scott's Place has the full write-up. You'll surely hear more about this, especially once we have Rails 1.2 shipped and are able to focus on it more exclusively.
But in the overall scheme of things, my presentation was rather inconsequential. It was far more interesting to see all the other fantastic stuff being demonstrated from people in the community at large.
Impressive shows from HAML, UJS, JRuby, and Capistrano HAML gave us a great take on how views can also be done. It looks a little cryptic at first, but don't let that shake you off. Once you internalize the meaning of %, #, and . it should be all good (and you already know most just from CSS). I'm not sure it's my flavor, but I love the willingness to think different.
Additionally, I can't help but have respect for a Canadian who manages to swear more than I did during my vendoritis rant and drink beer at the same time. A perfect example of the diversity in the Rails community. Very much part of what makes us special.
Honorable mention also goes out to Unobtrusive Javascript for Rails (UJS). By far the most professionally produced plugin I've seen yet. The guys behind it has strong opinions and plenty of passion. It's thrilling to see them being able to express it all with Rails without necessarily needing any kind of official support or blessing. This is one to watch for sure.
JRuby also impressed me. It's hard not to be in slight awe of seeing Rails run at a fast clip on top of Java and making snappy calls to EJBs. It's one of those things were I count my lucky stars that I won't ever need, but it's incredibly cool for those who happen to be saddled with a significant Java investment. Props to Charles Nutter and crew for making such rapid progress and to Sun for seeing the potential.
From my own backyard, Jamis Buck knocked my socks off with Capistrano Shell. What I wouldn't have given to have had that feature available during the initial setup of the new 37signals cluster.
If you manage more than one server, you should run, not walk, to get hold of Capistrano 1.2.
Kathy Sierra, _why, and Dave Thomas
I'm probably one of the biggest Kathy Sierra fans out there. She's so spot on in just about everything she writes about that it's a true joy to refresh my newsreader and see a new post from her Creating Passionate Users blog.
Having her talk at a RailsConf was an honor. She probably couldn't have picked a community more in tune with her values and more interested in her work. She's a sensational speaker and she made a great impression on the crowd. I kept overhearing conversations mentioning her talk throughout the conference.
Just as spot on Kathy was, just as funny _why was. But not only is he an overly-entertaining performer, he's also one heck of a programmer. Every _why talk has at least a handful of Ruby nuggets that I hadn't thought about.
And his latest work on sandbox looks stellar. Making it drop-dead easy to run multiple Rails applications in the same Mongrel process without conflicts. Thumbs up to both him and Matz for getting Sandbox on track for inclusion with the next Ruby release.
Finally, Dave Thomas rounded it all off with one of the most inspirational technical speaches I've ever heard. Tying terrorism, FUD, and enterprenuial aspirations together under one overarching theme takes serious skill. No wonder he was met by standing ovations afterwards.
And everything else that went on
I really had a blast. Meeting half the core team again in person was great. Shaking the hands of so many programmers who've found passion in Rails was great.
There was such a strong sense of community. Despite lots of minor disagreements and different view points, we all seemed to share a great many underlying values and appreciation for the same aesthetics.
And it's still hard to believe that we've come so far, so fast. That we have so many extremely talented developers working together. Enough to fill two conferences with multiple days of up to 4-way tracks within just a few months apart. Truly astonishing.
On top of these two recent real-life highlights, it's great to know that we'll be taking it even higher next year. With O'Reilly co-organizing both RailsConf US in Portland (May 17-20) and RailsConf EU in Berlin (September 17-19). I've grown a little weary of conferences in general, but there's no doubt that these are two I wouldn't miss for the world. I hope to see you there.
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