Tammer Saleh

Conferences in our small community serve a dual purpose. They give you a chance to really discuss the technology you care about with those who’ve used it in the wild, but just as important is the rest and relaxation you get with other geeks in your field. Which means that the two most important aspects of a conference are the subjects of the talks, and the venue.

This is also why smaller, regional conferences are a much better investment than the larger, out of the way conferences – you get more one on one time with the people you came to talk about, and you get to talk to them in some pretty amazing places.

That’s all just preamble to saying that I’m totally stoked to be speaking with Chad Pytel at Aloha on Rails on Ruby on Rails best practices.

You’re Doing It Wrong – Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh

As experienced Rails consultants, and authors of the upcoming Rails Antipatterns book, Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh have seen their fair share of terrible code. They’ll discuss some common AntiPatterns they’ve seen in the wild, and will walk through the process of refactoring them to bring them in line with current best practices. They’ll be making use of the latest Rails 3.0 features to transform code from appalling to awesome. In addition, they will be looking at audience submitted code snippets, and giving live refactoring advice.

I’ll also be participating in the Is Agile Too Slow panel, moderated by Jon “Lark” Larkowski of Hashrocket.

Is Agile Too Slow? – Jon Larkowski

Join our panel for a heated debate about whether agile project management and Extreme Programming methods are being applied appropriately to the problems they’re meant to solve. How do return-on-investment, opportunity cost, and risk management balance against quality in various project contexts? The overall theme is: maturing from dogmatic adherance, growing up to conscientious contextual application of technique. Jon “Lark” Larkowski of Hashrocket will moderate the discussion. We’ll cover issues such as When is hacking OK for short time-to-market?, Is high-quality code a technical fetish or does it have demonstrable long-term value?, and Do we apply the same standards to short and long-term projects?

I can think of worse things for your career than having drinks on a beach in Hawaii with some of the best Rubyists in the business.

Aloha on Rails is held October 4th through the 6th, and registration is still open.