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Better late than never — here are the slides and the code from the The Renegades Guide to Hacking Rails Internals, the RailsConf Europe 2008 Tutorial given by Pradeep Elankumaran & Michael Bleigh.
Click here to download
Sorry about the delay — the files have also been uploaded to the RailsConf Europe website, though we are not sure when that site will be updated.
Last week, along with a few of my Intridea colleagues, I had the opportunity to experience two entirely different Ruby-related conferences. The first was RailsConf Europe, an international Ruby on Rails conference in Berlin Germany. After giving our RCE talks, Pradeep and I got on planes and flew to Austin, TX for the Lone Star Ruby Conference, where Intridea presented a full-day training session. Both conferences had their own unique feel, and it was interesting to compare the community eco-systems inherent in each.
At RailsConf Europe, Intridea had two talks accepted “ Michael and Pradeep gave a tutorial on Rails Internals, and Michael and I presented a talk and coding session on Mid-End Rails Development. For our talk, the crowd was attentive, but very quiet. Generally when speaking in a packed room, there will be a quiet rumble as attendees comment on the ongoing presentation. The entire event had more of a formal feeling to it. This could perhaps be due to the language barrier brought on by attendees from all over Europe, the US, and the world coming together “ but it was a departure from my other presentation experiences.
Likely related to the varied backgrounds, the RailsConf Europe crowd did not seem to be very cohesive “ there appeared to be fewer hallway hack sessions and in-depth discussion that you often find at similar events. The venue also contributed to lack of cohesion. The hotel did not offer breakfast, so attendees didn't have that early morning mingling that usually occurs. Being held in a hotel in downtown Berlin, there were also many potential distractions. A quick nap in the room, a run out to the street corner bratwurst vendor, a wide variety of local pubs – there were many opportunities to be drawn away from the conference.
Because of the variety of backgrounds, along with the number of distractions, the community feel seemed to be a bit lacking.
The Lone Star Ruby Conference was an entirely different experience, I think a large part due to the venue. At LSRC, the venue was not attached to a hotel, all meals were provided, events were scheduled from morning until night, and there was not a great deal to do within walking distance of the venue “ not to mention it was almost too hot to go outside! All of these contributed to a more cohesive group that grew even stronger as the event went on.
Adam, Pradeep, and I presented our full-day training “ Rails Refactoring: Triage, Prevention, and Performance “ to a great group of developers. Having just come from RCE, where people were from all over, it was different to have a class full of people mostly from the same geographic area (Texas). Perhaps the nature of a training vs a session, but there was much more communication going on between attendees and instructors. The vibe was definitely more laid back.
That vibe extended to the rest of the event “ there were lots of hallway hacking sessions, people helping other developers with code problems, and many in-depth technical discussions outside of the actual talks.
Overall, both events offered some great technical talks and the opportunity to meet some great Ruby/Rails minds “ but for a community feel, Lone Star wins hands-down.
Michael Bleigh and Chris Selmer gave a talk at RailsConf Europe 2008 entitled “Hacking the Mid-End: Advanced Rails UI Techniques.” If you had a chance to attend, please take a moment to evaluate the session. If not, hopefully this post will help you understand a bit of what you missed!
This talk was aimed at being an introduction to the role of a mid-end developer; someone who facilitates the back-end and front-end developers and also writes the javascript interaction layer using Unobtrusive Scripting. You can view the slides embedded below, or you can download the slide deck directly.
The Rails app that we developed during the talk is available on GitHub with all of the completed code. If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks to everyone who came and saw the talk!
Greetings from still sunny Berlin, where Michael & I wrapped up our Hacking Rails Internals talk yesterday. We would love to hear comments from those who attended — we are actively working on getting the slides and demo code to you as soon as possible. Please rate our session if you did attend, so that we can get some constructive feedback.
Today, Chris & Michael will be presenting Hacking the Mid-End : Unobtrusive Scripting & Advanced UI Techniques in Rails. This 45-minute talk will be a discussion of the “Mid-End” — advanced user interface problems that don’t fit the traditional ‘back-end’ and ‘front-end’ categorization. You can find more details on the RailsConf site.
Chris & I will also be flying out today from Berlin to Austin, TX for the Lonestar RubyConf. Along with Adam Bair, we’re giving a 6-hour mid-level training session on refactoring Rails apps. We will be talking about how to effectively rescue horrid codebases, prevent your codebase from turning into a monster and performance issues — we’re quite excited.
While we’re sad to leave Berlin so quickly — we got the chance to checkout some excellent street food in the city. Next time you’re in Berlin, give yourself a break for one night from expensive restaurants and indulge in Doner Kababs and Bratwurst (usually found with a few blocks of your hotel). Highly recommended. We also saw some yellow watermelon, but that’s not much of a story.
Michael will be here in Berlin till the end of the conference on Thursday — please come say hello if you can at either conference!
Intridea will be speaking at two Ruby/Rails conferences this week. If you're attending either conference, make sure you come by and say hi!
Pradeep Elankumaran and Michael Bleigh will be presenting their RailsConf Europe tutorial: The Renegade's Guide to Hacking Rails Internals, on September 2nd.
This far-reaching tutorial will give Intermediate and Advanced Rails developers a crash course in hacking and extending Rails internals. The topics covered will include: Ruby Meta-programming Techniques; Rails Abstractions, Idioms & Mixins; Rails Structure & Initialization; A Tour of the Rails Class Loader; Plugin Locators and Loaders; Codebase Modularization using Rails Plugins; Extending ActionView Form Builders; Site-wide Settings; and much more¦
Michael Bleigh and Chris Selmer will be presenting a RailsConf Europe talk: Hacking the Mid-End: Unobtrusive Scripting and Advanced UI Techniques in Rails, on September 3rd. Here's the talk overview:
As web application development advances beyond the static page, a whole new field of development is emerging. In the Javascript behavior layer and markup abstracting helpers lie the 'Mid-End': advanced user interface problems that don't fit traditional ˜back-end' and ˜front-end' models. Explore this new field with case studies and real code such as usage of Lowpro Javascript behaviors to keep the behavior separate from the markup. Learn how to give back-end developers the tools to create simple, repeatable, quality markup through block-accepting helpers. Discuss the methods that allow for rapid development of complex interactions in new and exciting ways and see real examples. Finally, look into the future of the Mid-End and what lies ahead for user interface development.
Adam Bair, Pradeep Elankumaran, and Chris Selmer will be leading a training on the first day of the LSRC. The training is titled: Rails Refactoring: Triage, Prevention, and Performance. And the overview:
Maybe you inherited a mess of a Rails project “ or perhaps your own codebase is poorly-tested, not very DRY, or just generally confusing. Worse yet, maybe your Rails site has slowed down to a crawl or even stopped working entirely. Whatever the reason, it's time to consider refactoring these rough spots and boosting your site's performance.
In the first half of the day we'll go through real-life examples of (shameful) code we've written and refactored, give tips on how and when to start, and show you how to avoid the need for a future refactor. In the second half, we'll introduce common Rails performance pitfalls, how to diagnose them, and how to solve them. We'll also talk about other ways to speed up your app.