Week 3 — Ruby Ruby Ruby. | Daniel Nitsikopoulos

I've been listening to the latest The Adventure Zone campaign, Steeplechase . Based on the Blades in the Dark tabletop RPG, it seems to be a much faster paced campaign as compared to some of the other DnD based campaigns. So far I am quite enjoying how the system works, as well as the story.
I have been listening to the aforementioned podcast while commuting to the office as well as to Ruby Conf over the last few days. I haven't really missed the ~60min commute to and from the city each day, but it's kind of a novelty while I am in Melbourne for the week and being able to make more of a dent in my podcast backlog each day has been kinda nice.
Ruby Conf 2023 was packed with amazing presentations, and as always the balance of non-technical and technical focused talks was great to see. Some of the standout talks (to me) were:
- Upgrading the Ruby Community by Pat Allan— Pat challenges the audience to think more critically about the Ruby communities moto, MINASWAN, suggesting that nice might not be good enough anymore.
- The World Set Free by Coraline Ada Ehmke — Coraline chats ethics as it pertains to technology and politics. Highlighting that technology has never been apolitical, and never can be and that we as developers of software need to be constantly aware of how our work can be used to further exacerbate power imbalances.
- REACT to Imposter Syndrome by Prakriti Mateti — Prakriti talks strategies for interrogating whether a particular negative thought is being caused by imposter syndrome, and how to re-express said thoughts so as that they're more accurate and constructive.
- How Puma Works by Nate Berkopec — Nate talks about the internals of Puma and how to become an effective open source contributor all while racing against auto-advancing slides! This one was a particular standout to me, as I've always wanted to dig in to Puma's internals, but never knew where to start. Thanks Nate!
- All you need is Rails (Engines) by Julián Pinzón Eslava — Julián explains how he compartmentalised a Rails app using engines, and the various hurdles he faced along the way. Having not used Rails, let alone Rails Engines in a long time, this one resonated with me as it largely followed the "Slices" feature of Hanami
- A People Pleaser's Guide to Salary Negotiation by Colleen Lavin — Colleen gives us the advice we all need to hear about how to negotiate pay when going in to a new role.
- Security Doesn't Have To Be A Nightmare by Wiktoria Dalach — Wiktoria delivers one of the best talks I have seen on security. The delivery is perfect with sharp and to the point take aways. I have always been a proponent of shifting security left (earlier in the delivery timeline). Wiktoria gives us the evidence for why and the questions to ask to make sure everything is covered off.
- Implementing Object Shapes for CRuby by Jemma Issroff — Jemma gives a stellar run through of how the internals of Ruby's instance variable management works. Comparing the process between Ruby 3.1 and 3.2 made it easy to see where the performance gains are in Ruby 3.2, and why the changes made were necessary. Jemma also paired with Aaron Patterson in late 2022 on the implementation of Object Shapes. The video is highly entertaining and educational, I recommend it.
Talks aside, it was lovely getting to see some humans again, some of which I haven't seen since Ruby Conf 2020 😅
Since I am away from home this week, I am not sure how the little avo is doing, so watch this space as we all find out next week 🥑🌱

Week 3 — Ruby Ruby Ruby.

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