---
title: Brighton Ruby 2024 Recap
teaser: A summary of my time at Brighton Ruby 2024.
tags: ruby on rails
author: Rob Whittaker
published_on: 2024-07-18
---

A few weeks ago was Brighton Ruby here in the UK. This post is a brief overview
of all the talks from the day. Andy will put the full videos up on the Brighton
Ruby site when they are ready, and you should check them out when he does. The
talks were all fantastic and covered a range of topics.

## Getting to Two Million Users as a One Woman Dev Team

![Nadia Odunayo giving her talk "Getting to Two Million Users as a One Woman Dev
Team" at Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/qbmkiwmauw40bn53w8vbqf1fgfsl_IMG_0808.jpeg)

Nadia Odunayo kicked off the day with her tale of success getting The Story
Graph off the ground. The Story Graph is a Rails application that serves over 2
million users. Nadia told us how she used user testing, simple technology, and
low costs to achieve success. The applause and many gasps from the audience made
for a fantastic start to the day.

## Making Work (& Life) Less Stressful

![Nicky Thompson giving her talk "Making Work (& Life) Less Stressful" at
Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/rg0xbf6saqkzqob456u5gt313ook_IMG_0809.jpeg)

Nicky Thompson walked us through how to make better decisions to make our lives
easier. Nicky based much of her talk on "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel
Kahneman. I love these topics and often talk about my lizard and monkey brains.
Your life will change when you realise which brain is in control. You can stop
and see if there is a more logical route to take.

## Ractors are Ruby's Goroutines

![Daniel Vartanov giving his talk "Ractors are Ruby's Goroutines" at Brighton
Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/j9l1laj6vls9xzpcf90a76ixb4xr_IMG_0810.jpeg)

Daniel Vartanov gave a great introduction to Ractors. His talk was one of the
most accessible presentations of Ractors that I've seen. He took the time to
explain different scenarios and how they compare to other approaches. I would
love an excuse to play around with concurrency in Ruby. There were some
interesting topics about this subject in the hallway track.

## Litestack: Unleashing the power of SQLite

![Mohamed Hassan giving his talk "Litestack: Unleashing the power of SQLite" at
Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/6u8tihopkwhfngk6lx2lrvzq61iw_IMG_0811.jpeg)

Mohamed Hassan took us through his Litestack gem series for SQLite. Recently,
there has been a resurgence in talk surrounding SQLite. Mohamed maintains a
series of gems to help Rails developers make the transition.

## Database Troubleshooting for Developers

![Karen Jex giving her talk "Database Troubleshooting for Developers" at
Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/gukvfqj5g2mv3x73vykczrphr5at_IMG_0812.jpeg)

Karen Jex continued the database topics after lunch. This time, we talked about
potential debugging issues with PostgreSQL. There were plenty of great tips and
tricks here. Karen made the talk accessible to all experience levels.

## Mapping Concepts into Code

![Chris Oliver giving his talk "Mapping Concepts into Code" at Brighton Ruby
2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/sfw2ucbvtr894236ar6uc4l3grxh_IMG_0813.jpeg)

Chris Oliver explained how he used metaprogramming and domain modelling to build
Noticed. Learning how people develop products and seeing their thinking progress
is always great. Chris has a fantastic knowledge of Rails, and the DSL he built
was beautiful.

## Lighting Talks

As always, the quality of lightning talks at Brighton Ruby was at an all-time
high. The subjects ranged from Minitest to philosophy! I always learn much and
wonder what people could say with a 25-minute talk. They are always impressive.

## Revisiting the Hotwire Landscape after Turbo 8

![Marco Roth giving his talk "Revisiting the Hotwire Landscape after Turbo 8" at
Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/9dloije8t2yh2be66j4j02szbcnf_IMG_0815.jpeg)

Marco Roth is a big fan and proponent of Hotwire. He maintains many libraries
and created the Stimulus LSP for Visual Studio Code. Marco explained what the
latest release of Turbo means for Rails developers. He is looking for help from
the community to increase awareness and documentation.

## Who Wants to be a Ruby Engineer?

![Drew Bragg presenting his game show "Who Wants to be a Ruby Engineer?" at
Brighton Ruby 2024](https://images.thoughtbot.com/efxra8vsudfr5e86t5opepwdht2b_IMG_0816.jpeg)

Drew Bragg brought his excellent game show to the south coast of England. I'd
heard good things through the grapevine, but the show was even more impressive
in real life. The knowledge of some members of the community was astounding.
There was much conferring between me and the person sitting beside me. We gave a
good account of ourselves.

## Appreciation

This year was my fifth visit to Brighton Ruby. Andy continues to impress me
every time with the quality and range of speakers. The talks covered everything
from Ruby concurrency to successful product development. I love that the
conference is one track in one day and that I get to see all my #RubyFriends.
Next year will be fantastic again, and I look forward to it.