railsconf

David Heinemeier Hansson's RailsConf 2014 keynote argues that programming is closer to writing than to science, with clear code produced by iterating through drafts. It prioritizes clarity and craft over technical superiority.

David Heinemeier Hansson's opening keynote at RailsConf 2019 argues against the expectation of payment for open source work, drawing on his experience releasing Rails. It also includes lighter asides about the industry.

Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote at RailsConf 2010 in Baltimore. The Wine Library TV founder talks about building a business and audience through genuine effort and caring about customers.

Sam Stephenson's RailsConf 2016 talk on Turbolinks 5, showing how small teams can ship fast Rails apps in the browser and hybrid iOS and Android apps sharing one set of web views.

Robert Martin's RailsConf 2009 talk looks at why Smalltalk lost out despite its technical strengths. He draws lessons about language communities and arrogance that he argues could hurt Ruby too.

Brian Cardarella's RailsConf 2016 talk on why and how teams can move from Rails to Elixir and Phoenix. It covers performance gains without losing productivity and how to introduce Phoenix in an organization.

Aaron Patterson's RailsConf 2011 talk on Rails 3.1 performance, showing why deeper Rack middleware stacks slow Rails and how a shallower pipeline helps. It also touches on Rack API design.

Sandi Metz takes an ugly section of conditional code and refactors it into a few simple objects, bridging object-oriented theory and practice. The talk includes her take on the Gilded Rose refactoring kata and the idea that duplication is cheaper than the wrong abstraction.

Sandi Metz argues that hidden assumptions in code are missing concepts, and shows how to name and expose them so code is easier to understand and change. It covers null objects and messages in Ruby.

Rich Hickey's keynote at RailsConf 2012, a close sibling of his 'Simple Made Easy' talk. He distinguishes simple (not intertwined) from easy (familiar), and argues that software complexity comes from complecting things, with Rails-specific examples including large gem collections.

Sandi Metz's RailsConf 2013 talk offers practical guidelines for deciding what to test and how, so tests stay cheap and stable. She argues for testing the public interface rather than implementation and using mocks appropriately.