RailsConf 2014 - Day 3

Part 3 of 4

Keynote

Baratunde Thurston (Twitter, Company Twitter)

http://www.cultivatedwit.com/
http://fuckyoucongress.com/
http://bit.ly/rubytunde

Another fantastic keynote to watch again.

Wrote "How To Be Black". - "If you don't buy this book, you're a racist."

Front-End: Fun, Not Frustration

Roy Tomeij

Some useful tips, but mostly basic things I already knew.

Elements of Design: A Developer's Primer

Jenn Scheer (Twitter)

Seven Priciples

• hierarchy
  • blur vision to emphasize hierarchy
• contrast
  • use line shape color texture pattern
  • contrasting typography
  • explore non-defaults
  • using something like bootstrap is okay, just don't look like you did (so much)
• repitition
  • use a grid
• proximity
  • using space to associate and distance elements
  • keep groups no bigger than three to five items
• flow
  • across multiple pages
  • on a single page
  • stick to a single page to follow
• typography
  • don't use too many font faces
  • long lines of text are difficult to read
  • lines should be 35-65 characters long
  • ideal font-size:line-height ratio: 1:1.5
• color
  • consider a bold color that pops to make a part of your branding

Sketchnoting: Creative Notes For Technical Content

Jessica Eldredge (Twitter)

http://sketchnotearmy.com/
see photo for more resources

Sketchnoting is visual notetaking. Notes are handdrawn and incorporate graphical elements and illustrations alongside actual notes.

Why?

analog is inspiring
focus - especially if done on paper
improves memory - dual inputs (audio and visual)
fun!

Tools

• heavy plain paper (moleskin et cetera)
• multiple pens for variety

How

• about listening, not drawing
  • save emotional reactions for later
• follow the speaker, not the slides
• listen for key points
  • don't worry about capturing everything
• be astonished - the notes are primarily for the notetaker
• capture what stands out to you
• create a visual language
  • speech bubbles
  • large question marks
• share your notes - blog, twitter
  • attribute the speaker - speakers will appriciate

Tips

• get comfortable
  • aile is good for elbows, not good for no interuptions
• find good lighting
• get in early to capture speaker and talk info
• slow down
• play with layouts - paper is free-form
• decorate last
• embrace mistakes
• practice with pre-recorded media

Effectively Testing Services

Neal Kemp (Twitter)

https://github.com/nneal/snapcat
https://rubygems.org/gems/sham_rack

Testing HTTP network connection to endpoints not in the current repository

what is different about services

• over a network
• don't own the code

Running tests in "airplane mode"

• don't test against test-only API endpoints
  • recording responses for later is okay though
• built-in stubbing
  • typhoeus
  • faraday
  • webmock (just use this one)
  • another approach to mocking network requests is with sham_rack which allows inline Sinatra blocks to respond to external requests
  • puffing-billy

Tools

• Chrome dev tools
• Postman - Chrome plugin
• HTTPie - cli, easier than curl
• Charles - stand-alone
  • allows hooking into to phone's requests

Software Development Lessons From The Apollo Program

Julian Simioni (Twitter)

Apollo computer

• 2Kb memory
• never hit an unknown bug
• never failed

Takeaways

• handle failure gracefully
• don't fail big when you don't have to
• unit test prove your code
• integration tests prove your communication
• test off-nominal cases