Ruby On Rails: Canada On Rails

Ruby On Rails: Canada On Rails
The Canada On Rails Conference is starting this week (April 13 until April 16 This is the first ever Ruby on Rails conference in the world, showcasing keynote speakers as - David Hanssson, creator of Ruby on Rails; Thomas Fuchs, creator of script.aculo.us; Dave Astels, author of Jolt Award winning "Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide"; David Black, Ph.D., future author of "Ruby for Rails: Ruby techniques for Rails developers"; Joe O'Brien, an agile developer with ThoughtWorks; James Adams, Ph.D., creator of the highly successful Engines framework for Ruby on Rails

In addition to the six keynotes, nine other speakers will present during this two-day, single track event, at the BCIT Downtown Campus.

David Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails
Thomas Fuchs, creator of script.aculo.us
Dave Astels, published author on Test Driven Development
David Black, Ph.D, creator of SCANF.rb, RCRArchive
Joe O'Brien, developer with ThoughtWorks
James Adam, creator of Rails-Engines
Steven Baker, creator of RSPEC
Michael Buffington, cofounder of Price.com, co-architect of MeasureMap.com
Robby Russell, founder of Planet Argon
Geoffrey Grosenbach, host of Ruby on Rails Podcast
Kyle Shank, lead developer of RadRails and Rubish
Jeremy Voorhis, lead architect at Planet Argon
Alex Bunardzic, founder of Jooto
Sebastian Kanthak, creator of FileColumn plugin
Amy Hoy, upcoming author of a "Right-Brained Guide" to Ruby on Rails

Workshops

Riding the Rails
Presenter
Alex Bunardzic is a Java veteran, who joined the Java craze 10 years ago. Since the creation of Rails, Alex has been increasingly more involved within the community. Giving the first presentation at the Vancouver Ruby Association which hosted over 60 attendees, all very interested to hear what this framework is all about. He will also be speaking among the major Ruby on Rails superstars at the Canada on Rails conference. His area of expertise includes goal driven design, focusing on end-user experience

Summary
What is Ruby? And why is it on Rails?

Starting at the beginning, Alex will demystify the world of Ruby on Rails. During the two days, attendees will be guided through the basic understanding of Rails, including the MVC architecture, object relationships, and giving you a glimpse of the extremely broad Web 2.0 feature set inclusive in Ruby on Rails.

This course is meant for those who have not yet worked with Rails, and want to get comfortable with the basic functionality.

These core areas will be covered in this workshop:

Comprehensive list of Ruby and Rails resources
Installing and configuring your first Ruby on Rails application
Ruby on Rails Opinions
Using the code generators
Understanding Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture
Customizing your Rails MVC
Introduction to Gems, Plugin’s, and Engines
Outline

Day 1
On Saturday, you will be provided with an introduction to the principles behind Rails during an interactive discussion. During which, attendees will see sample code, and be guided through how everything ties into each other.

Overview
-History of Ruby on Rails
-Benefits of Rails
-Introduction to Ruby
Setting up your environment
Models, Views, and Controllers
-Understanding the concept
-How does MVC work in Rails?
The magic of code generators
Rails Opinions
-Pluralization
-Convention over Configuration
Gems, Plugin’s, and Engines

Day 2
During the second day in this workshop. Alex will get you hands on working with Rails. Starting with getting your own development environment setup, generating your first Rails project, and inspecting all the magic under the hood.

After the basics have been covered, and everyone is up to speed with inner workings that is included in the default development environment – students will get their hands dirty and begin with generating some code using some very simple commands.

Once the foundation has been laid, Alex will guide students through the process of doing several customizations to the scaffolding code, producing a unique application for everyone.

During the second day, students will learn to leverage the existing resources available on the net, and lay the ground work for continuing to learn on their own once they have completed the workshop

Books
Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas
Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, Second Edition


Agile Development with Rails
Presenter
Steven Baker is the one of the key figures in the Ruby community when it comes to Test-Driven development. Having created RSpec, the Behavior Driven Development framework for Ruby, Steven has studied and worked with some of the largest contributors in the Agile Development community. He has trained teams managing over 7 million community members how to adopt Test-Driven techniques, greatly enhancing their productivity and development focus.

Summary
During this intensive two day workshop Steven Baker, the creator of RSPEC (the Behavior Driven Development test suite for Ruby) will give you with the tools you need to deliver test driven software using agile tactics with the Ruby on Rails web application framework.

These core areas will be covered in this workshop:
Gaining a foundation of Test Driven Development (TDD)
The differences between TDD and Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
Test first philosophy
TDD/BDD as one of the foundations for agile development
How agile development applies to developing in Rails
Outlining the step b y step process to develop a test driven application
Hands on practice using agile tactics creating your own Rails application
Outline
Day 1
On Saturday, you will be provided with an introduction to the principles behind agile software development, and how these principles align with the Rails framework.

Overview
-Introduction to Agile
-Agile Principles
-Introducing Test-Driven Development
-Why Agile and Rails fit together well
-The Rails testing framework
Setting up your environment
Test-Driving the Rails
-No More Generators
-Unit testing
-Functional testing
-Semantic Markup
-External testing frameworks
Continuous Integration
-Writing tests
-Running your tests
-Writing the code
-Refactor your code
Deployment with SwitchTower

Day 2
On Sunday, this will be the day you are entirely hands on. You will first start with a guided walk through by Steven Test-Driving the development of an application in Rails.

After the guided development, you will be paired up and given time to Test-Drive a simple application together.

During the last half of the day, you are on your own to Test-Drive what you have learned and iron out any confusion you may have about any of the topics covered. This self development will be done while Test-Driving an application of your choice.


Books
Test-Driven Development by David Astels
Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas


Canada On Rails site is here