A Reflection On Ruby Conf India 2013

This year was Ruby Conf India was conducted in Pune(good for me, i live in Pune itself;) ) Our company – Weboniselab bagged the silver sponsorship for the Ruby Conf India 2013. Being my third time at the conference, i felt like a regular, my excitement nevertheless same as a first timer.

At the conference, I did not experience much difference from the previous ones that i attended. Although, what I liked the most in this edition was the increased community size and growing involvement of Rubyists. This year we saw a great deal of people attending the conference and the rise in the number was substantial this year. Also, what i found interesting was the increased number of women participation. Its always nice to see the Ruby community grow to become strong and healthy.

Talking about the sessions and especially my favourite ones!

• Aaron Patterson,

• Richard Schneeman,

• Jim Weirich and

• Jonathan Wallace gave truely inspirational talks.

Talks

• Aaron Patterson spoke on “Keynote on Rails and open source contribution”

  He provided some insight on the new features in the upcoming Rails 4. He also spoke about his experience as an Open Source Software developer, what he needed to become one and shared how it felt when people benefit from your contribution. He also talked about ways for developing ourselves and also provided lots of health tips :)

• Jonathan spoke on “Effective Debugging”

  His method of effective debugging gave a clear understanding on how we can effectively debug someone else’s application , while collaborating with others on their project. Jonathan showed lots of tricks which could give any individual a thorough understanding of the third party application. Developers are always looking for ways to boost productivity during development and being able to effectively debug the application becomes a crucial part to achieve optimum productivity with less code. He effectively conveyed how debugging allows one to easily discover inaccuracies between our expectations and how the software actually behaves.

• Richard Schneeman spoke on “techniques of dissecting Ruby with Ruby”

  As for me, I learnt how to use simple and sharp Ruby tools to slice into large libraries with surgical precision. Schneeman gave a live demonstration by hacking into Rails showing useful code probing techniques. This talk turned me from a bug reporter to bug fixer!

• Jim Weirich’s talk on “Test cases and TDD approach - Kata and Analysis”

  He built a roman calculator using the TTD approach.His approach towards understanding how to develop applications through TDD was refreshingly interesting.

Atmoshphere in conference :)

Moving on to the atmosphere and the vibe of the conference, communication among the participants in the conference and speakers felt smooth and good. I had the opportunity to meet lots of new people and discuss the latest trends that they are implementing in their work culture and there was a healthy communication among us and other participants. All the people i met are wonderful and they generously share their knowledge and experiences.

Lesson Learned!!

The lesson i came home with was the importance of Open Source Contribution, giving back and contributing to the community and growing with it as a developer. I am, personally, actively involved in open source contribution to the ruby community. I felt proud when i heard people mention my work, in our discussion, had helped a lot of people and his appreciation meant a lot to me. It feels good to know that you are able to give back something to the community in return and even better when its appreciated by such renowned people.

Realisation

What i realised, is that its not always about contributing to benefit an entire community, but about making that contribution even if its towards an individual’s benefit or towards a smaller organisation in your own small way. The general vibe sent out through Ruby Conf India 2013 was to take the community by the hand and grow as rubyists along with the others.