August 2023 Meeting

The August 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of August, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

This month we're hosted by the lovely folk at beam in their offices, at the Senna Building WeWork in Shoreditch. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Gain insight and better accessibility into your application's data by using The Brick #

Lorin Thwaits says

Remarkable visibility into the structure of your application and its data is available by using the open-source Rails gem "The Brick". Come meet the author of this gem, and experience the cornucopia of usefulness it can provide to teams who architect, elaborate upon, and then support Rails applications.

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub to visit so we can eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Beam
3rd floor
WeWork
Senna Building
Gorsuch Place
London
E2 8JF

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 80 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Frederick Cheung on Jul 12, 2023

July 2023 Meeting

The July 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 10th of July, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

This month we're hosted by the lovely folk at Creditspring in their offices, on 75 Davies Street. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Ruby to solve homelessness and the refugee crises #

Dan Hough says:

Social impact startup Beam (named by LinkedIn as one of the UK’s Top 15 Startups) has built pioneering products for government, social care workers - and homeless people and refugees themselves. Together, Beam is proving that tech can solve these problems for good. Hear about how a small Engineering team has built software that has transformed the lives of thousands of homeless people and refugees. And hear about the fun, meaning and challenge in Tech for Good.

1. LRUG July 2023 - Dan Hough - Ruby to solve homelessness and the refugee crises

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub to visit so we can eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Creditspring
1st Floor South (Office A)
75 Davies Street
London
W1K 5JN

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 90 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Frederick Cheung on Jun 28, 2023

June 2023 Meeting

The June 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 12th of June, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

This month we're hosted by the lovely folk at Funding Circle in their offices, on Queen Victoria St. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Tech debt for the rest of us #

Alfredo Motta says:

Tech Debt can be messy, but it doesn't have to be. In this short talk I'll present a simple approach to identify your Tech Debt, monitor it over time and make it actionable.

1. LRUG June 2023 - Alfredo Motta - Tech debt for the rest of us

Mutation testing - study case #

Adam Piotrowski says:

Let's talk about why and how we measure our test coverage. If you are using line test coverage measurement and you are happy with it, please let me show you some differences and examples of line TC vs mutation TC.

1. LRUG June 2023 - Adam Piotrowski - Mutation testing - study case

How we used CQRS to structure our new Borrower Portal #

Shenthuran Satkunarasa says:

Funding Circle recently built a new application that allows borrowers to manage their loans themselves. We structured the application using a (new-to-me!) design principle called Command Query Responsibility Segregation. Join me as I give a brief definition of what CQRS is before showing you the practical application of it via our new borrower portal 💻

1. LRUG June 2023 - Shenthuran Satkunarasa - How we used CQRS to structure our new Borrower Portal

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub to visit so we can eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Funding Circle
71 Queen Victoria St
London
EC4V 4AY

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 90 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Murray Steele on May 16, 2023

May 2023 Meeting

The May 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 15th of May, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

This month we're hosted by the lovely folk at Zappi in their offices, on Camden High St. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

GitHub Actions: an introduction #

Gus Shaw Stewart says:

An introductory talk about GitHub Actions - what they are, why they are important, and how you can get started with them.

1. LRUG May 2023 - Gus Shaw Stewart - GitHub Actions: an introduction

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub for to eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Zappi
Theatre House
97 - 99 Camden High St
London
NW1 7JN

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 90 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Frederick Cheung on Apr 25, 2023

April 2023 Meeting

The April 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 17th of April, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Note this is later in the month than we would normally hold the meeting, due to the Easter bank holiday.

This month we're hosted again by the lovely folk at Cleo at their offices, in Shoreditch. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Making a working upwards assignment operator #

Alex says:

Ruby has leftward assignment. It has rightward assignment. But what about upward assignment?

In this talk, we’ll misuse Ruby’s internals to build an arrow operator that lets us assign upwards. We’ll see some powerful Ruby metaprogramming features that allow us to bend Ruby to our will – and we’ll talk about why it’s good to write code that’s just plain daft.

1. LRUG April 2023 - Alex - Making a working upwards assignment operator
2. Upward assignment in Ruby

Build a mini Ruby debugger in under 300 lines #

Stan Lo says:

As developers, we know that the best way to learn is by doing. Many of us have built mini-rails, mini-sinatra, and even mini-rubies. But have you ever built your own debugger?

In this talk, I'll show you how to create a mini Ruby debugger that's both powerful and fun to use. You'll learn how to: - Run your program with debugger with a simple command - Set breakpoints and through debugger commands - Step through your code to find bugs

And best of all, you'll do it all in under 300 lines of code!

1. LRUG April 2023 - Stan Lo - Build a mini Ruby debugger in under 300 lines-lrug-apr-2023

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub for to eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Cleo
Unit 2.10
2nd Floor
Tea Building
56 Shoreditch High St.
London
E1 6JJ

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 60 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Chris Lowis on Mar 23, 2023

March 2023 Meeting

The March 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of March, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

This month we're hosted by the lovely folk at Zinc at their offices, on Eversholt Street. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Native apps are dead, long live native apps: Using Turbo Native to make hybrid apps that don’t suck. #

Ayush says:

You’ve heard it hundreds of times: Hybrid apps suck. That may have been true in the past, but things have changed significantly in the last decade. With tools like Turbo Native working in conjunction with Ruby on Rails, it’s possible to mix web technologies with native APIs to build slick hybrid mobile apps. We’ll take a look at why the hybrid approach gets such a bad rap, why that reputation is undeserved, and how we can build hybrid apps that don't suck.

1. LRUG March 2023 - Ayush Newatia - Native apps are dead, long live native apps

End to End typing for web applications #

Frederick Cheung says:

Ever had a bug because the frontend made incorrect assumptions about the shape of response data from the backend? Or maybe you trod nervously during a refactor? Or perhaps you broke an app by changing the backend data in a way you didn’t think would matter?

Learn how avoid this type of mistake, enabling you to keep moving fast, by having a single source of truth for your data types, checked both on the frontend and the backend.

1. LRUG March 2023 - Frederick Cheung - End to end typing for web applications

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub for to eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street
London, NW1 1AD
England, United Kingdom
See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 100 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Frederick Cheung on Feb 18, 2023

February 2023 Meeting

The February 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of February, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

👪 in person meeting alert 👪

Maybe next month we'll stop calling this out as a novelty, but for now it's still potentially unusual so here we are. We're once again in-person and the lovely folk at Funding Circle are hosting us in their offices, on Queen Victoria St. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Stream Again: live coding a Ruby project #

Tom Stuart says:

Last September I began regularly livestreaming my work on a side project to build a WebAssembly interpreter in Ruby. In this talk I’ll tell you how it’s going and what I’ve learned so far.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Tom Stuart - A supposedly fun thing I'll never stream again: Live coding a Ruby project

To mentor or to mentee - that is the question #

Matt Bee says:

I started out 2022 looking for a mentor to help me on my ruby career adventure. After reflection (and some interesting insights) I realised that perhaps that was the wrong way round, and I would get more from being the mentor - here I'll share a journey, lessons learned and why maybe you should mentor someone too.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Matt Bee - To mentor or to mentee that is the question

Data Structures in 3 Paradigms: Ruby Spotlight #

Frank Kair says:

Using a simple data structure as a starting point, we discuss three different programming paradigms (imperative, object oriented and functional), not only in terms of implementation, but also as a broader framework for learning and having a richer mental model for problem solving.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Frank Kair - Data structures in 3 paradigms: Ruby spotlight

Using the 'mob' tool for productive pairing #

Chris Zetter says:

My team started using the opinionated 'mob' tool for our remote mob and pair programming sessions. I'll explain what the tool does and how I've found it helps us to maintain momentum while pairing.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Chris Zetter - Using the mob tool for productive pairing

Strings: Interpolation, Optimisations and bugs #

Matt Valentine-House says:

In this talk we'll explore a bit about how string interpolation works in Ruby. We'll do this while investigating and fixing a bug arising from an assumption made as part of an optimisation many years ago that is no longer true.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Matt Valentine-House - Strings: Interpolation, optimisation and bugs

WET: Why DRY isn't always best #

Fell Sunderland says

An opinionated look at the pros and cons of choosing abstractions early vs. waiting and duplicating effort

1. LRUG February 2023 - Fell Sunderland - WET: Why DRY isn't always best

Using ChatGPT to Program in Ruby #

Jairo Diaz says

The talk will be about using ChatGPT, an advanced language model developed by OpenAI, to explore programming with a bot. The aim is to show how developers can use ChatGPT to learn, write, and debug code in the Ruby programming language.

1. LRUG February 2023 - Jairo Diaz - Using ChatGPT to program in Ruby

“Pure” OOP in Ruby #

Dmitry Non says

What if Ruby had NOTHING except classes and objects?

1. LRUG February 2023 - Dmitry Non - "Pure" OOP in Ruby

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave the venue (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub for to eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Funding Circle
71 Queen Victoria St
London
EC4V 4AY

See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 75 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Chris Lowis on Jan 18, 2023

January 2023 Meeting

The January 2023 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of January, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

👪 in person meeting alert 👪

Maybe next month we'll stop calling this out as a novelty, but for now it's still potentially unusual so here we are. We're once again in-person, this time we're hosted by the lovely folks at Unboxed in their offices, on Commercial St, near Liverpool St., Aldgate East, and Shoreditch High St. stations. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Heaping on the Complexity #

Matt Valentine-House says:

Join me on a journey through Ruby's Garbage Collector!

In this talk I'll teach you some of the details about how the Ruby interpreter manages memory. I'll introduce a project my team and I are working on that aims to make Ruby faster by improving its memory efficiency, and then we'll talk about how our implementation broke Garbage Collection.

After that we'll go on a journey together, through some weeds, and taking a few bad turns until we finally emerge with a few PR's that not only Fix GC, but make our project better too.

1. LRUG January 2023 - Matt Valentine-House - Heaping on the Complexity

What does "high priority" mean? The secret to happy queues #

Daniel Magliola

Like most web applications, you run important jobs in the background. And today, some of your urgent jobs are running late. Again. No matter how many changes you make to how you enqueue and run your jobs, the problem keeps happening. The good news is you're not alone. Most teams struggle with this problem, try more or less the same solutions, and have roughly the same result. In the end, it all boils down to one thing: keeping latency low. In this talk I will present a latency-focused approach to managing your queues reliably, keeping your jobs flowing and your users happy.

1. LRUG January 2023 - Daniel Magliola - What does "high priority" mean? The secret to happy queues

Solargraph-rails in 2022 #

Fritz Meissner

From chewing-gum-and-regex to 35,000 lines of code and YAML! Come hear about the past year of work on the solargraph-rails gem. You'll see new features, mostly from merging with the solargraph-ARC gem, and hear about the lessons learned along the way: more code means more to maintain and understand, but there's a surprising amount that can be done just by putting one foot in front of the other.

1. LRUG January 2023 - Fritz Meissner - Solargraph-rails in 2022

Afterwards #

Once we're done with the talks we'll leave Unboxed (after doing our best to help tidy up) and find a local pub for to eat, drink, and discuss the talks we've just heard.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Unboxed
60-62 Commercial Street
London
UK
E1 6LT
See on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 40 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Murray Steele on Dec 13, 2022

December 2022 Meeting

Unfortunately, the December 2022 meeting is cancelled

The December 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 12th of December, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

👪 in person meeting alert 👪

and with the December meetup it will be our fourth in person meetup of the 2022; all thanks to the helps of the amazing people at Zinc at their offices, on Eversholt Street. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Heaping on the Complexity #

Matt Valentine-House says:

Join me on a journey through Ruby's Garbage Collector!

In this talk I'll teach you some of the details about how the Ruby interpreter manages memory. I'll introduce a project my team and I are working on that aims to make Ruby faster by improving its memory efficiency, and then we'll talk about how our implementation broke Garbage Collection.

After that we'll go on a journey together, through some weeds, and taking a few bad turns until we finally emerge with a few PR's that not only Fix GC, but make our project better too.

What does "high priority" mean? The secret to happy queues #

Daniel Magliola

Like most web applications, you run important jobs in the background. And today, some of your urgent jobs are running late. Again. No matter how many changes you make to how you enqueue and run your jobs, the problem keeps happening. The good news is you're not alone. Most teams struggle with this problem, try more or less the same solutions, and have roughly the same result. In the end, it all boils down to one thing: keeping latency low. In this talk I will present a latency-focused approach to managing your queues reliably, keeping your jobs flowing and your users happy.

Afterwards #

When the talks come to an end we'll decamp to a local pub for some food, some drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.

Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and covered by our code of conduct.

Venue & Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees.

Secure your place #

Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via eventbrite.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street
London, NW1 1AD
England, United KingdomSee on a map

The venue has a hard limit of 100 people. If you register and realise you can't come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night who haven't registered, but we can't guarantee it.

Posted by Paolo Fabbri on Nov 13, 2022