Dave Thomas

By Dave Thomas

Ruby recently enjoyed its tenth birthday. Instead of cake and candles, the community celebrated by releasing a wave of new libraries and frameworks that make Ruby programming even easier. This talk features some of the best of these, as we explore Ruby.

We'll spend about half the session getting to know Ruby: the syntax, type system, blocks, iterators, and so on. Then we'll dive in and develop some real-world code using web services, RSS, and databases. If you want to come to the Rails talk, and you're not that familiar with Ruby, this talk is a good starting point.

By Dave Thomas

The Ruby on Rails framework has exploded onto the scene over the last few months. Propelled by some genuine benefits, and fueled by a whole lot of controversy, Rails seems here to stay. So, is it a Java killer? (No.) Is it a great way to develop certain classes of web application? (Yes.) Does it really deliver the 10-fold increase in developer productivity that some have claimed? (It depends...)

If you can't help thinking that there must be an easier way of developing web projects, come and join us as we construct an MVC-based Ruby on Rails application using the very latest libraries and tools. You'll get a taste of Ruby, and also a feel for some of the power and productivity gains offered by this remarkable framework. You'll need a grounding in Ruby to get the most from this talk; if you're not already a Ruby developer you might want to attend the Facets of Ruby talk before coming to this one.

By Dave Thomas

Are you frustrated by experts who can't tell you what to do, or by junior team members who refuse to see the big picture? How can you best develop careers: both yours and those of your teammates and managers? How can we learn to apply experience more effectively, and why do the many approaches designed to tame complexity actually end up increasing it?

Dave Thomas, of The Pragmatic Programmers, describes the solutions to these and other problems as he turns the Pragmatic Spotlight (and a good dose of twisted humor) on formal learning models, the Nursing profession, and streamlining sheep.

By Dave Thomas

Open Source communities produce high quality software with little management and (typically) no pay. Most people looking at open source focus on using this software in their projects.

This talk takes a different tack: how can we bring the open-source way of developing software into our corporations, improving the way we write software? It turns out the answer has a lot to do with people, and a lot to do with agile software development.

By Dave Thomas

Ajax is becoming a requirement for new applications: it creates richer user experiences and more dynamic applications. However, doing Ajax by hand is difficult and error prone. The good news is that if you use Rails, you don't have to do Ajax the hard way.

Rails has built in helpers that support Ajax development, and comes packaged with the powerful prototype.js and script.aculo.us libraries.

Come see how Ajax can be made to work with your Rails applications as we built a very dynamic ToDo list, and see how Ajax can be made robust with a simple calculator.

By Dave Thomas

The Ruby on Rails framework has unit and functional testing baked right in. In this talk we'll see how easy it is to get started with testing in Rails, and we'll explore jut how deep the testing support goes.

We'll look at the basics: unit testing models and functional testing views and controllers. But we'll dig deeper, looking at the supplied mock objects and seeing how easy it is to add our own. We'll also investigate test fixtures, using them to generate both static and dnamic test data. Finally, we'll have a quick look at performance testing.

By Dave Thomas

What do aboriginal rituals and (somewhat mean) experiments on apes have to teach us about software development? More than you might think.

Suspend disbelief as Dave Thomas takes you deep into the realms of mystical and magical thinking, where things will be all right---if only...