CUSEC 2006: Day 3/3
The final day of the conference started much later than the previous days. David Heinemeier Hansson, Rails founder, was supposed to present Ruby on Rails. Due to a snowstorm problem and planes locked down, Chad Fowler had to present it instead. I guess this was not really a problem for anyone as Chad is a good presenter after all.
- Ruby is a Toy and Rails is Boring, by Chad Fowler
- Software Startup, by Laurent Seiter
- Using Agile Methods to Deliver More Useful Software, by Unknown
Chad Fowler’s improvised Keynote session about Ruby on Rails was quite good. The demonstrations he made were nothing really new, but he did explain the Ruby perspective well. The slides he used contained references to Kathy Sierra’s presentation, which was barely 12 hours before. Since Chad was at the restaurant last night until around like 11 PM, I can guess he made them overnight. As a result to this presentation, I plan on trying Ruby (actually taking time to do it). I still have to see some examples of applications containing some real business logic. At least, I got to get a grip of the syntax today, even if there are a bunch of elements that simply make no sense to me.
I didn’t stay the whole time during the session on Software Startups. Partially because I wanted to attend to the session on agile development which started a little later, but still in parallel, but also partially because I realised I didn’t really want to hear about business plans today. Those things are way too formal and it won’t be useful for me anytime soon. I’d rather get hired for a job and work on large projects than fight to get contracts or starve doing R&D on my own. Things might change on the future. After all, we’re all going to finish our careers as consultants.
I was quite shocked when I heard, once again, about the CHAOS report during the session about agile development. Seriously, wasn’t that speaker in the room during that keynote everyone was attending? Wouldn’t it have been a good decision to take off those slides? A report with a bunch of stats from 1995 is just an easy introduction to the topic. The rest of the session was simply an introduction to agile. I would have expected some applied content, to be able to capture some experience from the speakers. The foundations of the agile methodologies are not hard to understand. Hearing some downsides gives a much more balanced perspective and makes it easyer to believe.