#185 2020

Overview and notes from RubyConf 2020.

Keynotes

Talks

Workshops

Parrot Emergency! Planning Reliable, Maintainable Software

Your team is writing an app for a parrot emergency room. The system tracks birds’ vital signs, patient histories, and breed guidelines to prioritize their care and notify vets immediately in an emergency.

This system needs to work—parrots’ lives are on the line! What will you do to plan a reliable, maintainable software system from the outset?

In this workshop, you’ll work with a group to:

Identify technical risks in the system
Quantify and prioritize the risks
Choose preventive measures and countermeasures to mitigate the risks
Go home with new toolsets to write your own trustworthy code!

Chelsea Troy writes code for mobile, the web, and machine learning models. She consulted with Pivotal Labs before launching her own firm to focus on clients who are saving the planet, advancing basic scientific research, or helping underserved communities. Chelsea live streams her programming work on NASA-funded mobile and server projects, and she teaches Mobile Software Development at the University of Chicago. Off the computer, you’ll find Chelsea with a barbell or riding her ebike, Gigi.

Lauren Campbell is a Backend Software Engineer at Spotify, working on Spotify’s Home page that serves 248M monthly active users. She is passionate about user testing and is a member of the Home Experimentation Panel at Spotify. Lauren earned her MBA and Masters in Computer Science from The University of Chicago and previously worked for JPMorgan Chase as a Senior Product Manager on the Chase mobile app. In her spare time she fosters senior dogs and helps them to find their forever homes.

Improve Your Technical Writing

It’s great to be able to write clear code. Being able to write clear prose is also an important skill for a developer. Developers communicate with their teams using the written word. Improving your writing skills will help you explain requirements to your team, improve the quality of your code review, and make all of your communication clearer. This workshop will cover specific issues of technical writing, and give concrete tips for improving and practicing your skills. Over the course of the workshop, attendees will create a piece of narrative documentation of their choosing.

Noel Rappin is a Staff Engineer at Root Insurance. Noel has authored multiple technical books, including “Modern Front End Development For Rails” and “Rails 5 Test Prescriptions”. He also hosted the podcast Tech Done Right. Follow Noel on Twitter @noelrap, and online at http://www.noelrappin.com.