Wroc_love.rb 2018 — Still Ruby conference?
Once again, Wroc_love.rb, one of the biggest Ruby conferences in this part of Europe, has come to charm us with a pinch of knowledge, fun, networking and confronting.
Motivations
I can safely say that I am a regular wroc_love.rb participant, as this was the third consecutive edition in which I participated. Although, I wasn’t so convinced that I would take part — when the early bird tickets were released there were only a few speakers announced. Also, I knew that this year I would join ElixirEU conference in April and WeAreDevelopers in May,so my schedule was filled for the first half of the year. But then the magic of wroc_love.rb has spoken to me again. After the second batch of tickets, I have checked the agenda again and it turned out that it was much richer and interesting. What finally convinced me not to abandon the conference was a wide range of topics which I am a huge fan of: DDD, CQRS and Event Sourcing, so I decided to take part with my colleagues from Briisk. That was an excellent decision!
Expectations
After two years of participating in tech conferences, I’ve learned how to manage my expectations. In 2016 edition I had no expectations, only enormous interest, because it was my very first large IT conference. After that, I received a huge amount of valuable practical knowledge. Thanks to that, my expectations for the next edition ware unduly high. More about this you can find in my post about the previous edition Wroc_love.rb 2017 — Ruby conference, subjectively. So, after two editions I knew that I had to curb my enthusiasm.
Last year I was particularly unsuccessful at networking. So this year, my main goal was to improve this area, because in my opinion, this is the second most important thing at this kind of events. There is nothing better than exchanging and confronting ideas with people much more experienced than us.
Talks
Wroc_love.rb is a Ruby conference, but almost all of the talks had some made reference to a particular functional language, and I am wondering why.
This year the conference had a significant influence of DDD.
Three most interesting talks this year were:
- “The pillars of Domain Driven Design” — Marco Heimeshoff — It was one of many DDD specific talks during the conference but for sure this one was the most interesting. Marco is involved in DDD community in Berlin and also he organises KanDDDinsky — a DDD Berlin conference. He covered what DDD actually is, what it isn’t, when to use it, who should learn it, how to use it with descriptive examples, and most importantly, what the risks and side-effects are. What I truly liked about this speech was that it was valuable for people who haven’t heard anything about DDD and also for those who are experienced in this methodology. I found Marco as a highly advanced speaker, so listening to him was a true pleasure. I recommend the speech to all fans of domain driven design and not only them.
- Understanding coupling — Łukasz Szydło — A programmer, architect, trainer (and also a DDD expert). Coupling is one of the most underestimated traits of a code. It’s usually difficult to detect a detrimental influence of this phenomenon, because developers get used to their daily practices, patterns, and conventions. This kind of bias makes it challenging to spot some code smells and issues with high coupling. The speaker broke it down and clearly explained the technicalities of how to decouple code. This presentation has forced me to inspect my code and it’s coupling more carefully.
- SUPER AIN’T SUPER: From OOP To FP and Beyond! — Nick Sutterer — The creator of Trailblazer — a high-level architecture framework for Ruby (one of the few speakers who were not familiar with DDD). He presented his journey with programming and how it had been changing over time, talking about his struggles with OOP, and why he started the functional approach with Ruby. I even asked him why he didn’t move to a functional programming language. If you are interested in the answer to go to the linked video. His way of presenting complex topics was humorous, energetic and easy to follow. It was an interesting case-study of a personal programming path.
Other notable speeches were:
- Event Sourcing Anti Patterns and Failures — Nathan Ladd
- Beyond the current state: Time travel to the rescue! — Armin Pašalić
- Toolbelt of a Seasoned Bug Hunter — Damir Zekić
Conclusion
My personal goal related to networking was achieved. I had a enjoyable intriguing discussion during the first after party with Andrzej Krzywda, who convinced me to give a lightning talk about how wroc_love.rb started my story with DDD. Thanks to that at the end of the conference I won an ebook from the pragmatic bookshelf, so I was twice happy with this decision. During the second after party, we had pleasure to meet Nathan Ladd. He shared a couple of nice stories about his living town Austin in Texas.
To answer the question, yes it is still a Ruby conference but with a thick coating of DDD and I like it!
Great thanks to all organizers, supporters and all people I had a chance to meet and talk to.
See you at the conference next year!
