Dave Thomas Closing Keynote

Starts out by thanking Matz.

Would like to see Rails set the standard for integration of people into the communitry. Talking about women, and why there are so few in the industry. Thinks that Rails can help welcome people. Asks for women to trust us a little by clearly participating as women

So far over $26,000 raised for charity thus far.

Challenge: Let’s try to make this the type of charitable donation standard for technical conferences.

Ze Frank talked about Anxiety.

The first keynote was 3 people and a dog. Now there are 1600 people at rails. 2 21 inch monitors telling him exactly how much time he has left. There also is the photographer right in front of your face.

Ze said some deep stuff, interspersed between the discussion of airplanes.

Normally people

• ignore
• control
• shutdown

Ze tries to facilitate conversation. This is what the rails community should do as more people start working with rails. Documentation may be one area to improve.

BC rails requires less effort it makes more apps possible. Opens up programming to new people (designers for example)

Scott Raymond: Orthodoxy and Orthoproxy. Orthodoxy - believing the correct things. Orthopraxy - doing the right thing.

Telling the story of Cargo Cults.

Cargo Cults we are following

• The Browser - the browser is essentially an IBM 3270 we’re talking dumb terminals Only difference between a browser and a 3270 is that a browser can display better porn. Not just browsers. We keep repeating ourselves. Prediction: 5-10 years from now dominant interface will be thumbs. Need to think of new ways to interact with users.
• Object oriented Programming - Simula. Suggests that you try simula. It’s called object oriented, not class oriented. Yet we spend all our time working with classes. The world is not hierarchical. There are almost no inheristance hierarchies in nature. Challenge: try coding ruby wihtout classes.

Challenge: think about what we do that is a cargo cult. Why do we use relational DBs? Why are we falling under the spell of REST?

Crowd shouting out: Macs? MVC? Social Networking? Showering? Wearing Black? Mongrel?

Mongrel is a good one.

TDD? Agile?

Not saying anything is good or bad, just saying that you should question.

The content of a conversation is in the focus - Ze Frank

The important thing is that we can facilitate people talking to eachoterh.

Rails: is a tool.
OO, REst, TDD: are techniques
Gurus: are just insecure people.

It’s not about any of that. It’s about you.

Have Fun!