Rails Conference 2008 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The party's over at RailsConf2008 and Portland can go back to being boring.

I promised a highlight reel and I am one to keep my promises.

First, the good - John Straw (yellowpages.com) on Surviving the Big Rewrite It's a great read because it's a success story

• Top 100 website in need of a lot more than a facelift
• 125k lines of code becomes less than 20k lines of code in rails
• Slightly less than 1 year from start (investigation and design) to launch

Next, the bad - which is not really bad because it is Scott Chacon's Gitting Git which is unfortunately 500+ slides but worth every page down keystroke. Git is hot - particularly in the rails world. So, if you are headed in the direction of GIT, you probably need to stop by and read Scott's tome. You can also listen to Scott's presentation.

And finally, the ugly - Guy Naor's Deploy Rails Apps Faster than Brewing Coffee The high point - his resume skips 25 work years. The low point - those hideous blue slides that keep reappearing. The even lower (as in subterranean) point - so little content and so much time to fill.

For an overview of some of the presentations, watch Gregg Pollack's RailsConf in 36 minutes Gregg is talented and helps the speakers give good overviews. Enjoy and see you in Berlin!

cs