Man, am I beat! RailsConf was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. Day 3 was a bit shorter and I ran a little late. But here’s some of the highlights from the talks I attended:

• DeRailing: Smashing the Rails Stack - started off a little slow and a little basic, but the main thing I got from this talk was Tarantula - it’s inspired by SpiderTest and gives you the ability to test your site against cross site scripting. Don’t forget to escape your erb with the h() function! (I’m definitely guilty of this faux pas)
• Everyday DTrace - it might have been the late night or something. I just was not into this demo. It was pretty low level and I couldn’t really see myself using DTrace everyday, or anytime soon.
• Advanced ActiveRecord Refactoring - Hats off to Chad Pytel from Thoughtbot on this talk. It wasn’t too advanced, but I think he covered some great ground. I hope it helped a lot of people new to Rails. One important thing to note that he highlighted and continued to emphasize - you can’t actively refactor code without good test coverage. He also talked about overarchitecture in role based permission systems. If you’re practicing Agile, you should only be building for what you need.
• Rails Core Panel - It was a bummer that DHH had to catch a flight. I think the core team is really cool, though. Diverse with different interests and backgrounds. I was sort of tuned out at the end, but they addressed a lot of questions about alternative frameworks. Before David left, he made a really good point about Rails clones. Instead of rebuilding it, why not just contribute and make it better?

I got to meet some cool people, and the irc room was pretty happening. It was also great to spend sometime with James after the conference while we waited for our flights back.

Also, if you’re a Rails developer, check out acts_as_community. It needs a little polish, but I think it’s got potential as a cleaner WorkingWithRails

Sorry there’s been a void of posts here. My career has been changing very rapidly. I’ve become a part of a great company, and I’m looking forward to pursuing the opportunity there. There is extreme potential both in the business model and in my ability to grow and learn. I’ve recently been tasked with managing the software development process and with leading a great team.

With that, it is time to take a look at the subject matter of this blog. I’m hoping to gear my content more towards my daily experience as an Agile Software Developer and Project Manager in a startup rather than freelance development and entrepreneurship. I hope you’ll enjoy the small shift in focus as I learn along the way. As always, your feedback and input is what makes this a discussion rather than a monologue. I hope we can all learn from each other’s experience here.

This Just In! College Drinking Games Lead to Higher Blood Alcohol Levels

DUH!