Hiring is not hazing Tech hiring has a bad reputation for a reason – it’s usually awful. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this talk, we’ll dive into what is wrong with many current tech hiring practices and what you can do instead. You’ll learn ways to...
Serverless is kind of a silly buzzword. After all, you can’t have websites without servers. Also, a lot of the messaging around serverless tries to make it sounds like you won’t need DevOps anymore and we all know that isn’t true. I’ll talk about the ways folks in DevOps roles...
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that programming languages are tools and not all tools are good for all jobs. Some tasks are easier to solve functionally. Some are clearly suited for OO. Others get simpler when you use constraint solving or pattern matching. Let’s go on...
Test All the F***ing Time is one of the values of the Ruby community. But how many of us test in production in addition to running our test suites as part of CI? This talk will discuss a variety of approaches to testing in prod including canaries, blue-green deployment, beta...
What is Developer Relations? This talk covers on Googler’s thoughts on DevRel as an emerging field in technology including the job titles that are part of DevRel and also the skills that make someone successful in DevRel.
Natural Language Processing is an interesting field of computing. The way humans use language is nuanced and deeply context sensitive. For example, the word work can be both a noun and a verb. This talk will give an introduction to the field of NLP using Ruby. There will be demonstrations...
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that programming languages are tools and not all tools are good for all jobs. Some tasks are easier to solve functionally. Some are clearly suited for OO. Others get simpler when you use constraint solving or pattern matching. Let’s go on...
Natural Language Processing is an interesting field of computing. The way humans use language is nuanced and deeply context sensitive. For example, the word work can be both a noun and a verb. This talk will give an introduction to the field of NLP using Ruby. There will be demonstrations...
As a developer, you know that the possibility of encountering an unexpected problem, big or small, is ever looming. Sometimes these problems are obvious and easy to fix. Other times though they take some work to track down and even more work to verify that you’ve actually fixed the bug....
Most of us have a “that day I broke the internet” story. Some are amusing and some are disastrous but all of these stories change how we operate going forward. I’ll share the amusing stories behind why I always take a database backup, why feature flags are important, the importance...
Most of us have a “that day I broke the internet” story. Some are amusing and some are disastrous but all of these stories change how we operate going forward. I’ll share the amusing stories behind why I always take a database backup, why feature flags are important, the importance...
Many people strive to be armchair data scientists. Google BigQuery provides an easy way for anyone with basic SQL knowledge to dig into large data sets and just explore. Using the rubygems.org download data we’ll see how the Ruby and SQL you already know can help you parse, upload, and...
Many people strive to be armchair data scientists. Google BigQuery provides an easy way for anyone with basic SQL knowledge to dig into large data sets and just explore. Using the rubygems.org download data we’ll see how the Ruby and SQL you already know can help you parse, upload, and...
GorbyPuff is setting off on a grand world tour and leaving us clues so we can follow him. Using Google Cloud tools such as Cloud Vision, BigQuery, Google Translate we’ll track down Gorby at all his stops. While we’re at it we’ll learn some tools you can use to add...
Many of us get a few years into our career and get stuck in a rut. Maybe we stop reading about the latest and greatest in tech. Maybe we start managing and do less coding than we’d like. Maybe life gets in the way and coding becomes drudgery. One way...
Many of us get a few years into our career and get stuck in a rut. Maybe we stop reading about the latest and greatest in tech. Maybe we start managing and do less coding than we’d like. Maybe life gets in the way and coding becomes drudgery. One way...
There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing. Sentiment analysis based on emoji? Why not? Hacky...
There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing. Sentiment analysis based on emoji? Why not? Hacky...
There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing. Sentiment analysis based on emoji? Why not? Hacky...
It is a fact of life: When you are running a website stuff goes wrong. Someone puts a dictionary on the keyboard and reloads your site a million times. Your mobile app hits an error state and sends messages that cause 500s on your server. An external service takes 5...
Like most programmers I am lazy. I don’t want to do something by hand if I can automate it. I also think DevOps can be dreadfully dull. Luckily there are now tools that support lazy DevOps. I’ll demonstrate how using Docker containers and Kubernetes allows you to be lazy and...
It is a fact of life: When you are running a website stuff goes wrong. Someone puts a dictionary on the keyboard and reloads your site a million times. Your mobile app hits an error state and sends messages that cause 500s on your server. An external service takes 5...
I’ve been fortunate to receive some great advice during my career. Some of it is pithy, some of it is practical, and some is the little things you learn when working at semi-functional organizations. By the flickering light of a projector, I’ll pass along the my favorite pieces of wisdom...
In Ruby, assignment is our primary tool. By contrast, functional programming makes much less use of assignment and mutation. Instead techniques like function composition, recursion, and anonymous functions are used. Despite being OO, Ruby accommodates pure functional approaches. This talk will demonstrate how tasks can be accomplished without assignment. Ruby...
Storage gets cheaper every year and as a result many folks are turning into data hoaders. Maybe your current project has gigabytes or even terrabytes of data sitting in storage. Perhaps some has used the words “big data”, “data mining”, or “personalized experience” as an excuse to keep paying the...
Imagine a chef who doesn’t know what the words braise, julienne, or sauté mean. Even if he is a good chef, and uses these techniques daily, he’s not going to be able to work effectively with others. He won’t be able to use published recipes. He may struggle to improve...
I’d like more participants and fewer audience members at Seattle.rb’s monthly meeetings. To remedy this I’m putting my money where my mouth is and offering up $100 to be split between two winners of a Coding Challenge during May 2014. Rules Contest runs from May 7th 12:00 PM - June...
In OO, assignment is one of our main tools. Most developers learn how to store values in variables shortly after learning “Hello World”. By contrast, functional programming makes much less use of assignment and mutation. Instead techniques like function composition, recursion, and anonymous functions are used to produce the same...
"but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes" -- Ben Franklin If Ben was a programmer, he probably would have said "death, taxes, AND BUGS". How we handle things when something goes wrong can be the difference between an all-nighter and a good...
Data is a hot buzz word in the industry. Every day there are more startups with “Big Data” somewhere in their elevator pitch. There are dozens of devices to record how we sleep, what we eat, how much we exercise, even how often we breathe. Every action we take online...
Data is a hot buzz word in the industry. Every day there are more startups with “Big Data” somewhere in their elevator pitch. There are dozens of devices to record how we sleep, what we eat, how much we exercise, even how often we breathe. Every action we take online...
Wild test suites often contain inefficient or ineffective tests. Working with a code base full of these beasts is frustrating and time consuming. This safari will help you identify and hunt down common testing anti-patterns. Afterwards you’ll know how to approach a test suite full of beasts without losing your...
When I talk about Prolog people seem to have one of three reactions: love it, hate it, or huh? Prolog is different enough from Ruby that it can be difficult to grok at first. When you get over that initial hump though you’ll see where it shines. In this talk,...
Many projects involve large datasets. While humans are master pattern matchers, trying to find patterns and issues by looking at reams of text is hard. Sometimes you just need the 30,000 foot view but creating diagrams by hand is time consuming and prone to error. The graph gem makes it...
Many projects involve large datasets. While humans have evolved to be master pattern matchers, trying to find patterns and potential issues by looking at database rows and xml is hard. Creating diagrams is helpful but manually creating them is time consuming and prone to error. The graph gem makes it...