by Kevin Murphy

RailsConf 2021

RailsConf wrapped up in mid-April with a virtual gathering, featuring attendees from 61 different countries. The talks are now available to all on YouTube, so if you're looking for some suggestions on where to start, please allow me to curate a list for you.

Recommended Talks

Refactoring: A developer's guide to writing well

This is my favorite session that I've had the opportunity to watch thus far. Writing is such a critical component of our jobs (and lives), and this primer is presented in such a friendly manner.

Hiring is Not Hazing

If you're associated with a tech company, and reading this around the time that this published - you're probably hiring. Whether you are or not, take this opportunity to evaluate the process you use to lead to better outcomes for candidates and the organization.

Missing Guide to Service Objects in Rails

"Service objects" as a concept means so many different things to different people. This talk introduces different philosophies people take in constructing service objects and presents the trade-offs of each.

A Day in the Life of a Ruby Object

Garbage collection, mark and sweep, page size, memory allocation - all concepts that can feel very intimidating. However, when presented so masterfully eloquently, this talk is a great way to make these topics feel more approachable.

ViewComponents in the Real World

Encapsulating view logic and presentation in ViewComponents helps promote reusable and testable objects to the view layer of your Rails app.

Speed up your test suite by throwing computers at it

This has a number of keen insights on improving the performance of your overall test suite.

Engineering MBA: Be The Boss of Your Own Work

I'll be honest: I did not actually watch this talk. But let's just say I'm very familiar with the subject matter and the presentation.

Talks I Look Forward To

I did not have the opportunity to watch everything I wanted to during the conference. Here is a small sampling of what's still on my list.

The History of Making Mistakes

As someone that has certainly never made a mistake before, I can't wait to learn what all the fuss is about.

How Reference Librarians Can Help Us Help Each Other

Anything that talks about how awesome librarians are is ok by me. I look forward to hearing more about how I can approach my day-to-day work with the mindset and tools that a reference librarian brings to bear in their profession.

What the fork()?

Need something to be faster? We'll fork a process and it'll magically be better, because concurrency...right? I'll let you know after I give this talk a view.