---
title: RubyConf 2007 Day 1
teaser:
tags: news,web
author: Eric Mill
published_on: 2007-11-03
---
## Welcome to RubyConf
Me, Tammer, and Dan are all here at the **OMNI CHARLOTTE** Hotel, at the
RubyConf 2007 conference. This is my post, written throughout the day, so be
prepared for some crazy tense switching.
Marcel Molina is launching RubyConf with the first talk, about what makes
software beautiful. He's bringing in a lot of linguistics and mathematics and
physics concepts, and is sure to remind everyone that he has a liberal arts
degree, not some plain computer science background. His literary upbringing is
all too evident, as his presentation is eloquent, elaborate, and florid.
> Words mean stuff, we all know that, right?
—Marcel Molina, Jr.
FIRST THOMAS AQUINAS SLIDE OF RUBYCONF!
Honestly, the whole thing came off rather pretentious, much like this blog
posting. He tried to define a less subjective idea of beauty, and then apply it
to code, but I don't think it resonated with anybody except those who already
agreed with him and read [project.ioni.st](http://project.ioni.st) religiously
(as I do).
> Can you imagine [programming without \'if\'](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/coding-without-ifs)?
—Marcel Molina, Jr.
Next, Jim Weirich is giving a talk now on Advanced Ruby Class Design. He's
showing us some advanced Ruby class design using Builder, the XML building library that is featured
prominently in Rails. He apparently wrote Builder...and Rake! He just asked
about Lisp, getting a good bunch of cheers, all mysteriously from the rightmost
block of the room. Why...why there?
## Camping versus Robots
At 1:00, the rooms divide, and it's Nathaniel Talbott presenting Why Camping
Matters, on \_why's
[Camping](http://redhanded.hobix.com/bits/campingAMicroframework.html), versus
Ben Bleything presenting Controlling Electronics with Ruby, on Greg Borenstein's
RAD. Nate has the\_why factor going for him, and his room is packed, and Ben
has the robots factor going, and his room is packed. I'm drawn to both of
these, so I'm going to be Zack Morris on [Cut
Day](https://savedbythebell.wikia.com/wiki/Cut_Day) and try to be in two
places at the same time.
Nate's room, Room 1, is bigger and people are sitting on the floor, which is
also where I am. He's introducing \_why, chunky bacon, etc., and pointing out a
disturbing cutout of Alan Keyes in the back of the room.
> Camping isn't opinionated. It's strange.
—Nathaniel Talbott
Over in Ben's room, people are also sitting in the floors—in fact, getting
into the room is tough, because they've lined the doors. Ben has a scrolling
LED marquee on the front of his podium, and a red and green lightbulb set up on
posts nearby. He's talking a lot about X10, the company which makes the
hardware this stuff is running on, but he has no problem referring to them as
scummy, while also recommending people buy stuff from them. This is how you
know RubyConf is a bunch of young people.
He's turning the red and green lightbulbs off and on, through IRB, right in
front of us, and controlling the messages on his scrolling marquee. Very neat.
Controlling electronics with Ruby is pretty awesome, but there's a lot of
caveats to remember while coding, like remembering to sleep for 1 second after
closing a port, and using Kernel.require instead of require if you require the
library after requiring 'rubygems', and actually allocating enough memory for
your strings. It'd be nice if more of that could be shoved under the hood.
> It's red, it's green, it's amber, or it's a rainbow.
—Ben Bleything
Nate's hitting on a really good point about Camping, which is that it shows you
that writing a framework that does the same kind of things that Rails does isn't
as daunting as it seems. It shows you that a lot of seemingly giant problems
aren't actually that giant. Which is really what \_why is all about, as
evidenced by his recent Ruby GUI
library, [Shoes](http://shoesrb.com/).
> Rails encourages conformance. Camping encourages experimentation.
—Nathaniel Talbott
Ben's using a webcam pointing at his own face and hands, to show off the
physical chips he's using in front of everybody at a size that everyone can see.
Another neat idea. The guy is drowning in wires, and had to do some rewiring on
the spot, but he pulled it together, and the process clearly impressed everybody
in the room.
Nate's talk is getting a little restless, as it's more about coding culture than
real Camping content. There's a RubyConf twitter account that people can
broadcast messages with, and Al3x from Twitter just broadcasted the first bash
of the conference. I just unsheathed my obsidian dagger.
## Twine
Eric Ivancich is giving a talk on Ropes, as an alternative to Strings, for use
in programs where you need extreme performance in string storage and
manipulation. I find the subject interesting as it is, as he puts it in the
context of performing DNA simulations, but the flame annihilation effects he
puts on his exclamation points on transition really help to maintain my
attention. Eric's a clear and confident speaker, but he inserts a lot of All
right?s and Okay?s, which push him a little bit into the realm of arrogance.
> This takes place in O(log n), as you can imagine.
—Eric Ivancich
## Ruby Sadism
Ryan Davis is here to talk about Hurting Code for Fun and Profit, and has 120
slides to go through in 45 minutes. So far, the bulk of them are cartoons,
which are getting an **insane** amount of applause.
> The developer's obligation is to make sure the code gives the clearest
> possible statement as to how the solution was understood at the time of
> writing.
—Ward Cunningham
People also enjoyed his invention of the word mentarbator, as a description of
people caught in analysis-paralysis. This talk is more about self-improvement
than any specific code processes, so it depends on him selling himself as a
guru, and he seems to be succeeding at that. Someone's piping up in the
audience, presumably one of his colleagues, to tell him that he made someone cry
once, but refuses to disclose any identity. The twitter blasts are very
positive, one guy saying he's teary eyed.
I enjoyed being reminded to **focus!**, and unsubscribe from a bunch of garbage,
and get rid of clutter, I do that already but I need to hear it every so often.
He also suggested learn a new language every year, which is as good a reminder
as any for me to learn Python, as I've intended for months now. Still...this
guy is a little overrated.
## Town Hall
Matz is on stage, sitting casually on the edge of it and wired up to a mic that
could stand to be a little louder. He's a soft voiced man, though, and his
English is a little rough around the edges, so it may not matter. I have poured
some Mello Yello into an elegant glass.
The first questioner quickly alienates the entire crowd. He's from a company
who makes some kind of media playing software on Windows, in Ruby, and he's
pissed off about Ruby 1.9's backwards incompatibility. He complains about
`File.exists?` changing to `File.exist?` and breaking all of his code! He
describes this as a bad reason for incompatibility and basically asks Matz what
on earth he is thinking. The crowd is restless and annoyed, it's very
uncomfortable. Matz responds that he's been wanting to make that change for a
while, he tries to maintain backwards compatibility, but sometimes he needs to
break things. And that is all he needs to say.
> I like all programming languages, except for several.
—Matz
It's a little rough, overall, as Matz' answers are usually incomplete. This is
partly because of Matz' impaired English, but also partly because people get up
there and talk for a while and don't ask real questions. And, when Matz gives
them an incomplete answer, they don't follow up, but just say Thank you. and go
back to their seat, leaving everyone feeling a little awkward. I'm guilty of
that last one myself, both times I went up to ask questions. I just didn't know
what else to say, and so it ends on an awkward note.
> Q: What would you remove from the Ruby language?
A: ........ ........ .......from Ruby?!
Still, it's honestly awesome to just hear Matz take all these questions and
answer as honestly as he can. There's a strong sense of reverence in the room,
but nothing fanatical, and the audience refrains from a maudlin standing ovation
at the end. It was a fine end to a fine first day at RubyConf.