RubyConfPH 2017 First Day

Bobbilee Hartman/Dylan Wolff: Fostering Jr. Dev Talk

• Culture:
  • Whole team needs to be on board.
  • Making mistakes is okay.
  • Senior are proactive about checking in. They (junior) might be embarrassed about asking. You (senior) have to show that they (junior) are worth their time.
  • Share other interests, not just all work, all the time.
  • Open and honest communication. Speaker said that she was having a hard time figuring out ember, and when she opened up the other devs said they had a hard time too.
  • Ownership of a discrete feature: Giving them a responsibility/own a feature (while reinforcing that its okay to ask sr. what to do.)
  • Jrs. leading standup/meetings. When they have that kind of responsibility, they feel like they deserve to be ther.
  • Jrs. representing their company at meetups.
• Support
  • Pairing: Not always, but it can work, switch people up so they are not always paired with the same person always.
  • Don’t let them isolate themselves. Sometimes they are overwhelmed, don’t allow that to happen.
  • Training/conference budget.
  • Learning lab. 2 meetings, one with product manager and one with engineer and ask whatever.
  • Keep them focused on their own growth. They should not compare themselves with others, especially when they are learning with people more senior than them.
  • Regularly scheduled one-on-ones (about once a month)—super helpful, get feedback on how they are doing.
  • Code reviews—consistently review code.
  • Encourage juniors to “timebox” any problems.
  • “How difficult is this question?” If they have a question, it has a number (1-10 1 easy 10 hard). If they ask a question, sr. can say “ah yeah that is a 10, it’s a hard problem, I’ll think of a solution later then chat with you about it” or “that’s a 2 or 3, you can solve that if you google it a bit”

Netto Farah - Challenges with API

• Multiple clients with different access patterns - iOS wants to download a lot at once jic no connection, web app assumes you have a decent net connection
• API must be granular—more endpoints, or heavier response/json on the endpoints
• Soundcloud blog/microservices— 30 api calls to render a track one (not really productive)
• Documentation/conventions—Documentation is seen as “duplication” and you need to be disciplined to keep it updated with the code
• GraphQL - A language specification for defining APIs
  • Describe your data in types:
  • Problem GraphQL API as an integration layer for multiple (not so micro) services and front-ends

type Rubygem {
  name: String
  downloads: Int
  versions: [ Int ]
}

Konstantin Hasse - Magenta is a Lie

• Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
• Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
• Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
• Abstractions occur only in your mind. Abstraction is the basis of Computer Science. Without abstractions, every software development talk would start with explaining with flowing electrons.
• Colors of the Rainbow - “as many as you can see”.
• Good rules make good programs.
• “Don’t abstract things too early. Duplication is far easier to deal with the wrong abstraction.”
• Strong external abstractions allow weak internal abstractions
• Things we invent that exist in our mind: types, inheritance, composition, type hierarchies, mixins…
• Most attacks rely on switching up and down abstraction levels. Ex: heartbleed, it worked on the assumption that users use the same password for different sites.
• Business logic - Only exists in our minds. OOP—none of this actually exist, they are just concepts in our mind. They are not inherent to how we perceive the world.
• UI elements only exist in our minds, we are just relying on the fact that people will understand what these things look like alone or in combination.

Lightning Talkz (with a Z)

• CodeCuriosity
• 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 solution.
• Always search for a gem with the word gem
• Repeat what the guy is saying in you head and look at their forehead if you don’t want to look at their eyes.