tl;dr: Here you can find the Rubyconf 2018 talks!

A couple of weeks ago I attended Rubyconf in Los Angeles. The level of most talks was impressive. I found myself in a difficult situation choosing the talks I wanted to attend. Here’s the summary of the ones I enjoyed the most and a link to the video!

Opening keynote, Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz)

Really interesting talk from Matz about the importance of Open Source communities, what drives a community and how to engage people in your community.

I really enjoyed one sentece from this talk: “People do things, so you can do things”

Yes, You Should Provide a Client Library For Your API, Daniel Azuma

This talk from a Google engineer was about provinding client libraries for APIs. Doing it adds some value to your API and creates a better experience for the developer, as you can hide some complexity, improve performance and handle errors for a seameless experience when using your API.

Building for Gracious Failure, James Thompson

We can’t fix what we can’t see, so measure things, add instrumentation, measure more things, and build assuming that failure is going to be a reality.

Who And What We Are Leaving Behind, Bianca Escalante

AMAZING talk from Bianca Escalante. She talks about who are we leaving behind in the Open Source communities and the consequences of it. When people are excluded so are their ideas and innovation stalls.

How to Build a Magical Living Room, Saron Yitbarek

Open Source communities and how to make them inclusive and accessible was a trendy topic this year. This inspiring talk talks about it. Must watch.

Let’s subclass Hash - what’s the worst that could happen?, Michael Herold

Subclassing hash can look like it’s not a big deal. Surprise: it can be. This talk is about the leasons learned with Hashie and why subclassing hash is trickier than expected.

Trash Talk: A Garbage Collection Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, Colin Fulton

Interesting talk if you want to learn more about how your computer handles memory and how the garbage collector works. And the author uses great analogies using racoons to explain it!

Pointers for Eliminating Heaps of Memory, Aaron Patterson

This talk starts with Aaron Patterson doing Aaron Patterson things and continues with a great explanations of some Ruby internal topics and how some optimizations have been made to the runtime.

The Challenge of Change, Jessie Shternshus

One of the best talks of the conference. It talks about how difficult and uncomfortable is to unlearn something, but also why we need to unlearn, as it is the only way of making room for something new.

Ruby is the Best Javascript, Kevin Kuchta

WTF Ruby. Crazy things that Ruby allows you to do but you shouldn’t.

Hijacking Ruby Syntax in Ruby, Tomohiro Hashidate, Satoshi “Moris” Tagomori

WTF WTF WTF Ruby WHY.