It’s that time again… the weekend of 16-18th March was time for iRonin Ruby on Rails developers to get excited and head to Wroclove.rb - the most prominent event in the Ruby community, that we have been supporting since 2015. It is almost a company tradition to visit Wroclaw and participate in this amazing event for Ruby enthusiasts and developers. Check what our top Ruby developers have to say about this event.
As always, Wroclove.rb was super popular, with lots of attendees from Poland and many guests from abroad joining in on the action. Apart from conferences and discussions, there were also awesome after-parties over the course of the conference, making a perfect ground for networking.
Wroclove.rb is aimed especially at people fluent in Ruby - but anyone, whatever their level at Ruby is and their professional path has been so far, is welcome to join in on the fun. Topics cover both new elements and trends in Ruby, as well as some basic explanations of this wonderful language that communicated both entertainingly and interactively.
*Cold weather seems to be a tradition during Wroclove.rb ❄*
For some of our Ruby developers, it was their first time at Wroclove.rb, while others have attended previous editions. However, everyone agrees that “this year’s edition has been the best one so far” and that “the conference [was] full of useful knowledge and of high quality”.
We also noticed that “conference was very focused on DDD [Domain-Driven Design]” and “the best part was one of the Lighting Talks, where music was being programmed”. Check out more on our top thoughts of the conference below!
Topic highlights
Subjects that were raised this year:
1. Special DDD Wroclaw: The Pillars of Domain-Driven Design at Main venue
2. Better WebPerformance with Rails - material
3. Cables! Cables! Cables! - materials
4. Counterintuitive Rails
5. Discussion Panel - Enterprise Rails - questions
6. SUPER AIN’T SUPER: From OOP To FP and Beyond!
7. Event Sourcing Anti Patterns and Failures
8. Applying CQRS & Event Sourcing on Rails applications
9. Discussion Panel - Modern JS - questions
10. MVCC for Ruby Developers - materials
11. Understanding Coupling
12. Beyond the Current State: Time Travel to the Rescue! - materials
13. Toolbelt of a Seasoned Bug Hunter
*This is how one of participants felt after the after party… Tired out from networking perhaps*
Our impressions
As a quick Twitter survey shows, Domain-Driven Design, Cables, Understanding Coupling, Toolbelt of a Seasoned Bug Hunter and MVCC were among the most inspiring presentations for participants. What do our own developers think? Let's hand it over to iRonin’s Ruby developers that attended Wroclove.rb 2018 to explain.
Mateusz, Ruby on Rails Back-End Developer:
The conference was very focused on DDD - Domain-Driven Design.
I consider this a good thing for developers who are experienced and work in legacy projects. The conference itself is mainly aimed at experienced Ruby programmers - so it made sense.
I highly enjoyed Lukasz Szydlo’s talk on Understanding Coupling. The session was based on simple examples. He showed how to find relations in the code and how to get rid of them and what I thought overall was a valuable lesson for everyone. I also really liked the MVCC talk.
This year the event was even better than the previous editions I’d been to.
Jakub, Ruby on Rails Back-End Developer:
It was my first time at Wroclove.rb and I found the conference full of useful knowledge which had breadth as well as depth. Personally, I think it says a lot about the Ruby community, in that it has matured and is looking for and exploring new solutions, other approaches.
Lukasz Szydlo’s presentation had sprinklings of my favorite industry buzzwords like “context” and “it depends”! The other two speeches I enjoyed were Marco Heimeshoff's, from which I remember the sentence: "Whatever works, works!" - it doesn't matter whatever tools you rely on, as long as they are used wisely, and Nathan Ladd's talk, from which I recall this one interesting point: "Do not change tools, step back and think!
I had the opportunity to attend many conferences in Europe and Wroclove.rb stands out mainly with its focus on quality content. It truly resonates that it is an event for people passionate in Ruby - made with good, non-intrusive marketing, simple means, without mush fuss. Nevertheless it is very well-organized and well-received in the community. The content itself is definitely its biggest advantage.
*A wonderful and productive time spent together, see you next year!*
Przemek, Ruby on Rails Back-End Developer:
This was my third time at Wroclove.rb - and I consider this year’s edition the best so far.
A great attention was paid to Domain Driven Design, the trend that already has been outlined in talks over previous years.
My personal highlights of the conference were:
* Counterintuitive Rails by Ivan Nemytchenko - a presentation aimed at less experienced people, but very specific in content, with lots of step-by-step examples on how to improve architecture.
* Understanding coupling by Lukasz Szydlo - in a very approachable and interesting way, explaining relations between classes in code.
* Event Sourcing Anti Patterns and Failures by Nathan Ladd - a very practical talk that fitted in perfectly with the DDD subject. The most interesting part of this talk was how deal with too little or too much data within published events and how to smoothly made transition from the old to the new version of events. It’s something that developers struggle with, when introducing event sourcing in their systems.
My overall impression - once again I was able to see that the Ruby community is thriving and is striving to always develop further.
*Very fancy T-shirts that were handed out at the event 😍*
Kamil, Ruby on Rails Full-StackDeveloper:
It was my second time at the conference and I liked it just as much as last time - or even more!
Closer to my heart were talks not strictly on the subject of DDD. For instance, the Counterintuitive Rails or Toolbelt of a Seasoned Bug Hunter sessions, during which some useful tools for debugging were shown and tutorials on how to work with them.
Intriguingly, the best part was one of the Lightning Talks, when music was being programmed.
Sebastian, QA Engineer:
It was my first time around at Wroclove.rb. My favorite talk was the Toolbelt of a Seasoned Bug Hunter by Damir Zekic. Why the Toolbelt presentation? I think debugging the issue of slower and more resource-consuming launching of tests was explained in a nice manner. Damir described thoroughly how he looked for a solution and found it in Ruby itself. He also showed that debugging such an issue is neither very difficult, nor time consuming.
Additionally, I have to mention that programming music with Ruby during the Lightning Talk was one of the highlights!
See you next time!
It was a very interesting, useful and actively spent weekend running around with Ruby and its fans. We were at Wroclove.rb last year, we were again this year, and we can’t wait to go again next time! We try to keep up with the latest trends in IT and we are fans of Ruby, as well as good programming practices. If you feel similarly, you may fit in our team! Check our career page and drop us your CV, if you want to join us!
