I’ve been at my new job only four weeks, and my first project is nearly finished. My task these past four weeks has been the re-implementation of the company’s website in Rails. I was to do this from scratch, while keeping the site’s design and existing link structure. Among my requirements is adding support for multiple languages, as the company wants to show it knows how to make websites for a diverse, multi-ethnic audience. Another requirement was, that I was to do this re-implementation by myself. The company only has one other experienced Rails developer, and he is busy doing maintenance work on older non-Rails projects for company customers.
It’s been a pleasure working on this project, and I am very pleased in the progress I’ve made in such a short time. I look forward to going live in another two to three weeks, once the site has been through QA and any changes required.
—
This coming Wednesday, May 16, I am off to RailsConf 2007, in the lovely city of Portland, Oregon. Portland is great, I have been there twice and I’ve had a great time each trip. I look forward to the visit very much.
Two of my coworkers from the Williams F1 project, Kyle Drake and Nick Wright, are going to be attending RailsConf as well. It’s gonna be great to meet them face-to-face. Daniel Browning, one of my fellow coworkers at my new job, lives just north of Portland. My college buddy Ken Williams lives in the Portland area too. I plan to meet with them at some time during this, my third visit to Portland.
There are so many sessions I want to attend at RailsConf. But interestingly enough, I feel I won’t get any value out of the tutorial sessions, so I didn’t sign up for any of them. That means I’m out of the tutorial-attending n00b league, yeah! 
We’ll see whether I can hang on to that thought in the other, more advanced sessions. 😀
A few of the sessions sound downright dull. I guess some of the n00bs will find them interesting, since they’re looking for ‘insight’ and whatnot. Whatever. 😉
What am I looking for from RailsConf? I’m looking for some nitty-gritty I can sink my teeth into, some new tech I can experiment with and learn more from. I’m looking forward to have my brain blown by something cool but complicated that I can learn over the next few months. I want to learn about some new-to-me techniques and plugins or gems that I can master and take my Ruby and Rails to a higher level.
I also look forward to meeting some people face to face. Tim Bray is going to be delivering the keynote on Saturday morning. If you’ve been reading my blog for the last year, you already know what I think of him: he’s the d00d!
The JRuby guys will be presenting one session, and I think their work is of importance for the growth of Rails outside the leading edge. I think JRuby will be the thing to help Rails cross the chasm and be adopted by mainstream.
At OSCON 2005, DHH signed my Agile Web Development With Rails 1st Edition, so I will try to get Robert Martin, Dave Thomas, and Andy Hunt to sign some of my other books that they wrote.
Anyway, I’ll talk to you all later!
Technorati Tags:
rails, ruby, hacks, open.source, web.architecture, web.technologies, railsconf
