The talk was a chapter from from Joël’s upcoming book, The Web as a Platform, and was well done in terms of the HTTP specification, the web in general, and managing state via an architecture that is stateless by nature. There’s even a nice callout to htmx which I emphasize in my talk as well. Here’s the slides.

We chatted, briefly, while in the lobby before the day kicked off so was interested to learn where she would take this. The functional aspects of Ruby, especially functional composition which I’ve also written and spoken about is always of particular interest to me. Even better is when people show how you can apply the Railway Pattern for fault tolerant pipelines.

Instead, this talk was about the basics of procs and lambdas told through the lens of improvisation. Good for people getting started but there was definitely a part of me wishing the audience could see the full spectrum of how far you can take this and how much better your implementations can become.

For lunch, I ended up catching up with folks at the White Duck Taco Shop which was delicious. I was late getting there because I wanted to test my slides after the last talk only to discover I was getting no video from my macOS.

Turns out there was a macOS Tahoe bug, that I haven’t seen in previous versions, where your macOS can’t recognize external displays. I believe this is related to HDMI connections but not entirely sure. The workaround was:

I wasn’t the only one effected by this as a few other speakers ran into this too. If you are running macOS 26.4.1, then this is something to pay attention to.

This is more of critique — but not of the speaker — of what happens in large organizations that aren’t adamant about code quality. What caught my eye, during this talk, was the lack of nested modules/namespaces. This is known as the Flat Modules Antipattern. As a consultant, I’ve run into this antipattern more times than I care to admit because this always causes unnecessary pain when improving or maintaining code bases (especially larger codebases).

You can avoid this pitfall by always nesting your models because this gives you more flexibility in using modules and classes. Ruby definitely allows you to use flat modules but wish it didn’t.

The day ended with LLM dark humor which is both a cautionary take on slopware and not forgetting about the human connection that makes up great teams. It’s a well executed talk so give it a watch when it becomes available. Here are the slides.

For dinner, I ended up at Birdie’s Pizza hanging out with a few folks from the Greenville, North Carolina area. The pizza was good, and with only two huge slices, was definitely filling.

I was most interested in this discussion but ended up leaving early because the discussion didn’t tap in to the thing I wanted most which is actionable next steps. Like how do we form unions, collectives, etc. and how do we band together to fight for a better future where the craft of software can be enjoyed instead of the race to the bottom through slopware.

Instead, this ended up being more of a alcoholics anonymous meeting where the mic went around the room where each person would start with some form of the following: "Hi, I’m Bob and I’m a recovering Rubyist of X years." Others would take the mic and then ramble on for what seemed like ages. I did enjoy that when Rachael Wright-Munn (fellow speaker) spoke, she was composed and to the point.

All of the sentiment, sharing of experiences, etc was definitely valid but not exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t end up speaking, only listening until I left after an hour in.

I ended up kicking off the second day. I also had the most complicated talk in terms of technology. Here’s the full setup:

I had fun giving this talk which was on intermediate to advance Ruby (functional, object oriented, and, advanced patterns). It was also the most code heavy of all talks. I’ll let you judge whether I did a good job or not but hope folks are inspired to expand upon what’s possible in Ruby.

These talks always take a toll on me as my mouth tends to dry up when speaking and I had to pause, briefly, to get some water. I thought I had unscrewed the lid for quick access but, alas, it required an awkward moment to get back on track. Best laid plans as they say.

Rachael is a very good speaker including elegantly bouncing back from technical hiccups. Her talk was on getting started in open source, contributions, guidelines, and so forth. Definitely good for beginners.

I’ve also thought a lot about this and put a bunch of effort into automating much of the process set forth in Rachael’s talk and would definitely recommend using these gems if setting up a new project which applies much of what Rachael is saying:

I never spin up a new project without the above. Hopefully, they help you too.

David suffered some of the same display issues as me and wasn’t able to fully use his machine, which was a bummer, but he handled the hurdles well and gave an interesting look at LLM rubrics. I’m still chewing on all of this and still have it on my list to dig into this more and give feedback. We ended up talking afterwards which was enlightening. Super interesting and very positive person to talk to.

Here are his slides and recommended links to check out:

Ended up at Pack’s Tavern, which was delicious, and talking to a lady interested in my hardware setup along with an old acquaintance, John Paul Ashenfelter, that I think I’ve known for over a decade and Mark Starkman. The discussions were mostly focused on the craft of software engineering. Always my favorite kind of discussion.

Lots of interesting talks and too much to detail here. Make sure to check out the video when they land. I managed to give a talk on Git Lint which, despite some rendering issues with my slides (fixed now), made it in at the end.

My lightning talk turned out to be serendipitous and a nice setup for Thomas as he would speak about the importance of good Git commit messages more in his talk that concluded the day. More people discussing how important this is is good for all of us.

This was a dense and jam packed talk that moved about as fast as my talk. I was delighted to see someone, as adamant as me, speaking about good Git etiquette and the power of Git Commit Anatomy. My favorite engineers are those that take the time to capture their thought process in their commits as it makes code reviews, learning the history of the project, and leveling up so much more enjoyable. Great writers make for great engineers.

There’s a lot to unpack in this talk so check out the slides to learn more.

Funny enough, I ended back at Pack’s Tavern which, again, can’t complain. The food was great and a good excuse to explore more of their menu.

After dinner, I followed the group down to Burial at South Slope. My social battery was getting drained at this point. I’ve learned that two days of social interaction is about where I start to run out of steam. I stayed for an hour or so and then made my way back to the hotel. Tried to say goodbye to those I could and, of course, Jeremy who put all of this together.

Would have liked to have talked with Jeremy more but when, you’re running the entire conference, time is extremely limited.

Jeremy did an amazing job (including Mark and Joe). Definitely would like to come back in the future and hope Blue Ridge Ruby continues to gather fellow Rubyists to this location.