November 2020 Meeting

The November 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of November, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). In defiance of the new lockdown, we will be holding the meeting in Trafalgar Squ… no, of course not. We're still online. Stay home. Protect the NHS.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

Thanks to the beautiful people who responded to our cry for talks, we've another two lined up for you this month, but we always need more. Email talks@lrug.org, yeah? G'wan. It'd be a real help.

Patches Welcome! #

Everybody at LRUG probably uses open source software - unless they got lost on the way to another meeting - but it often surprises me how few developers take the extra step from using it, to contributing to (or releasing their own) open source software projects. I'm going to talk about how I got involved in the open source community, why I stay involved, and about my current open source projects

Denny de la Haye has been a programmer for nearly 30 years now - "although my ZX81 code is thankfully all lost in the mists of time (AKA audio cassettes and thermal printer paper)", he says. He has spent most of the last 4+ years writing Ruby, and most of the 15+ before that writing Perl. The switch between the two was less traumatic than he expected, but it did lead to starting another open source software project last year…

1. LRUG November 2020 - Denny de la Haye - Patches Welcome!
2. Links to pages and projects mentioned in "Patches Welcome!"

Convention over Kubernetes: (Almost) Configless Deploys with Kuby #

Rails' most well-known mantra is "convention over configuration," i.e. sane defaults that limit the cognitive overhead of application development. It's easy to learn and easy to build with. The development experience is fantastic… right up until the point you want to deploy your app to production. It's at that point that the hand-holding stops.

Heroku to the rescue, right? Just push your git repo to "heroku master" and never think about deployment again! Heroku is a great option for many small projects and the ease of deployment is exactly the kind of experience Rails developers are used to. To quote Aaron Patterson: "but at what cost?" You're tied to Heroku's stack and stuck within the limitations of their free tier. Heroku's add-ons can get pretty expensive too if you decide to upgrade later on.

How can we, but humble Rails devs, achieve the same seamless, turnkey deployment experience affordably? Enter the Kuby gem, a convention-over-configuration approach to deploying Rails apps using industry-leading technologies. Come learn how, with almost no configuration, you too can use Kuby to leverage Docker and Kubernetes to deploy your Rails app cost-effectively on a variety of cloud platforms.

Cameron Dutro currently works on the Quip team at Salesforce. He's been programming in Ruby and using Rails for ten years and has held previous positions at Fluther, Twitter, and Lumos Labs. When he's not reading about, using, or working on technology, Cameron can be found hiking in the hills behind his house or hanging out at home with his wife, daughter, and cat.

1. LRUG November 2020 - Cameron Dutro - Convention over Kubernetes: (Almost) Configless Deploys with Kuby

Afterwards #

For the good of the country, we have had to pause our normal post-LRUG pub time, but typically a few folks will hang on in the zoom call after the talks are over. We've been meaning to try the new self-selecting breakout rooms too, which we could. But inn general, the ongoing-pandemic after-meet experience could still use some work: if you have any ideas on that, do get in touch at organisers@lrug.org.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we are all in our own little bubbles.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by James Adam on Nov 02, 2020

October 2020 Meeting

The October 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 12th of October, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). In keeping with the times, our meeting will be online.

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got two talks lined up for you this month. We also need more talks for the rest of year, and beyond, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG.

JWTs - what Rails developers need to know #

Dan Moore:

What is a JSON Web Token (JWT) and why do you care? JWTs are a stateless, standardized way to represent user data. This talk will discuss why JWTs matter and the nuts and bolts of JWTs. We’ll also discuss how you might use a JWT in your Rails or Ruby application.

1. LRUG October 2020 - Dan Moore - JWTs - what Rails developers need to know
2. JWTs - What Rails Developers need to know
3. Building a Secure Signed JWT
4. Ruby JWT Examples

Getting Past the Tech Test #

Michael Mazour:

Sometimes people have great backgrounds and great skills, but have trouble getting hired because they didn't approach the tech test the way the company wanted. As someone who reviews a lot of tech tests at work, I'm going to explain some of the unwritten rules and expectations that you might not know if you've been out of circulation or are just entering the job market, and help you level up your tech test game.

1. LRUG October 2020 - Michael Mazour - Getting past the tech test
2. Getting Past the Tech Test

Afterwards #

A few of us usually hang out in the Zoom chat after the meeting. It only really works with a handful of people though, so we're still on the lookout for something else tha would work for more attendees. If you have any ideas on that, do get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we can explore it together.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by Chris.Lowis on Oct 05, 2020

September 2020 Meeting

The September 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of September, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). In keeping with the times, our meeting will be online.

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got two talks lined up for you this month. We also need more talks for the rest of year, and beyond, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG.

StimulusJS: Modest JS for the HTML you have #

Matt Swanson:

An overview of StimulusJS (a small framework from Basecamp) and discussion on when you might (or might not!) want to use it

1. LRUG September 2020 - Matt Swanson - StimulusJS: Modest JS for the HTML you have
2. StimulusJS: Modest JS for the HTML you have

Wizards without magic #

Duncan Brown:

Multi-step forms (a.k.a wizards) are fiddly to build and difficult to test. (And not just in Rails). Why is that, and how can we make them better?

1. LRUG September 2020 - Duncan Brown - Wizards without Magic

Afterwards #

It's not quite hanging our of drinks and food in a local pub, but a few of us usally hang out in the Zoom chat after the meeting to chat. It only really works with a handful of people though, so we're still on the lookout for something else tha would work for more attendees. If you have any ideas on that, do get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we can explore it together.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by Murray Steele on Aug 31, 2020

August 2020 Meeting

The August 2020 (What? Already?!) meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 10th of August, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Like last month the venue this time is wherever you happen to be because it's COMPLETELY VIRTUAL!

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got two talks this month. We also need more talks for the rest of year, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG

Language doesn't matter: what makes a senior engineer? #

Matt Bee:

What makes a senior engineer? What other aspects of being a senior engineer are as important, if not more important, than knowing a programming language inside out. What things can you work on to become or be a better senior engineer (that won't have a new framework out by next week!). This is a set of lessons learned in a journey from self taught front end developer to senior polyglot developer (via ruby).

1. LRUG August 2020 - Matt Bee - Language doesn't matter/ what makes a senior engineer?

Doing the right thing #

Chris Zetter:

Ethics are the principles of right and wrong that govern our behaviour. Using examples from my experience, i'll share some tools that you can use to understand ethical decisions and ways to help ourselves and our team make the right choices.

1. LRUG August 2020 - Chris Zetter - Doing the right thing

Afterwards #

Normally a few of us hang around in the Zoom chat after the meeting, but we're still on the lookout for other things we might try. If you've got a good idea of how to replicate the post-talk chats get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we'll see what we can do.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by Chris Lowis on Aug 02, 2020

July 2020 Meeting

The July 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of July, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Like last month the venue this time is wherever you happen to be because it's COMPLETELY VIRTUAL!

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got one talk linked up so far for you this month. There's room for more so please get in touch if you'd like to talk about something. We also need more talks for the rest of year, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG

Improved security for password authentication #

Jolyon Pawlyn:

Devise is a great authentication solution and is standard in many Rails applications. I want to look at 2 easy improvements to the default password validation. Then let's see what it takes to implement bare bones two-factor authentication using Devise and Warden.

The security features to be covered can be viewed in an example application.

Jolyon is a volunteer at Crowdfrica, ex Contentful, Wunder Mobility and Unboxed Consulting, and also an aspiring yardener.

1. LRUG July 2020 - Jolyon Pawlyn - Improved security for password authentication

Perfect is the enemy of good #

Nicky Thompson:

This talk is a rambling rag-tag collection of software engineering and problem-solving lessons learned over the course of mumble years as a developer and now an engineering manager. It includes practical tips, philosophical insights, or just advice that other people gave me that I found helpful. These ideas have helped me be better at my job over the years. They are tried and tested, things that I have actually done throughout my career. They might or might not help you.

Nicky is an Engineering Manager at FutureLearn, providing management and support to the Technology Team. Offline, Nicky enjoys watching bad TV and learning new stuff: this year it's a serious sewing/dressmaking habit.

1. LRUG July 2020 - Nicky Thompson - Perfect is the enemy of good

…. you? #

As I mentioned above, we've basically run out of offers to give talks. I can certainly vamp for ten minutes about whether or not I care about using single or double quotes for strings without any interpolation, but I think it's almost certain that some of you have some thoughts or experiences that might be more interesting.

Please get in touch on talks@lrug.org and we will take it from there.

RubyConfBY Raffle #

The kind folks at RubyConfBY have given us two tickets to their conference to raffle to our attendess. The conference is going to be held (online) on the 18th & 19th of July, between 2-6PM CET (so that's 1-5PM BST). They've got a great line up of very interesting talks, and of course, it's never been easy or cheaper to attend a conference since there's no travel or hotel costs to factor in. But you can reduce that cost to zero by signing up to attend LRUG.

During the meeting, we'll run a raffle for all registered attendees and pick two. And even if you don't win in the raffle, the organisers have arranged a discount for LRUG members, which we'll share on the night.

Afterwards #

Normally a few of us hang around in the Zoom chat after the meeting, but we're still on the lookout for other things we might try. If you've got a good idea of how to replicate the post-talk chats get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we'll see what we can do.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by James Adam on Jul 01, 2020

June 2020 Meeting

The June 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 8th of June, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Like last month the venue this time is wherever you happen to be because it's COMPLETELY VIRTUAL!

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got two talks for you this month. There's room for one more lightning talk so get in touch if you'd like to talk about something for no more than 10 minutes. We need more talks for the rest of year, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG

Hanami, another Opinionated Rack-based Framework #

Panos Matsinopoulos:

We present Hanami and its differences to Rails. Then we show an integration case between a Hanami and a Rails project. Finally, we close with a PR on the Hanami project.

Panos is a Senior Software Engineer at Lavanda.

1. LRUG June 2020 - Panos Matsinopoulos - Hanami, another opinionated rack-based framework

Agile or Waterfall; a risk management perspective #

Alfredo Motta:

Today Agile is the default choice for software development out there. Every conference, book, or blog post is telling us we are doomed to fail if we don’t follow this established convention. But isn't it surprising to think that Agile is advocated as the right methodology for every possible company doing software out there? Are we going to organize software development exactly the same way if we are working for a startup, NASA, or FedEx? It seems hard to believe. In this presentation, I will explore the mental model to help you choose when you should (or sometimes should not) use Agile using the lenses of risk management. My goal is to provide guidance for the puzzled business owner, project manager, or software developer who wants to pick what's right for their company or team.

1. LRUG June 2020 - Alfredo Motta - Agile or Waterfall; a risk management perspective

Afterwards #

Last time there was no afterwards, we just stopped the zoom meeting. That felt a bit abrupt, if you've got a good idea of how to replicate the post-talk chats get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we'll see what we can do.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just in case.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by Chris Lowis on May 18, 2020

May 2020 Meeting

The May 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 11th of May, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Like last month the venue this time is wherever you happen to be because it's COMPLETELY VIRTUAL!

We'll run the meeting on our own zoom account, so make sure you have the zoom client for your preferred device, or know how to attend via the web.

Full registration details are given below, note that we will only be sending out the zoom meeting url to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

We've got two talks for you in May so far. There's room for at least one more mid-length talk, or a couple of short ones. We constantly need more talks for the rest of year, so please get in touch on talks@lrug.org if there's something you'd like to say to LRUG

Comparing the speed and elegance of different computer languages using a Hamiltonian curve algorithm as the comparator #

Peter Bell:

My company (Trapeze) specialises in public transport including schedule optimisation. Finding Hamiltonian curves is a sub-problem to the travelling salesman problem and of the general problem of optimising pickup and drop-offs in demand responsive public transport. This talk will compare implementing a Hamiltonian curve finder in a number of different languages. The talk looks both at the speed of the language and the elegance. For Ruby, I compare a couple of different implementations. Other languages that are compared are Elixir, Go, Javascript, Java, C++, C# and Python.

The source code is in a public Github repository details of which I will provide as part of my talk

1. LRUG May 2020 - Peter Bell - Comparing the speed and elegance of different computer languages

Debugging Ruby HTTP Library Surprises #

Sam Joseph:

Some folks prefer 'puts' to debugging with something like pry-byebug, but I'm a huge fan of debuggers, particularly stepping through my own code and the code of the many libraries we all rely on. In combination with bundle open to insert breakpoints into the code of gems being used in your stack, debugging can expose really tricky dependency bugs, as I aim to demonstrate with one that I found in the way different ruby HTTP libraries can interact.

1. LRUG May 2020 - Sam Joseph - Debugging Ruby HTTP Library Surprises

Afterwards #

Last time there was no afterwards, we just stopped the zoom meeting. That felt a bit abrupt, if you've got a good idea of how to replicate the post-talk chats get in touch at organisers@lrug.org and we'll see what we can do.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

Even in a virtual world there are limited places for attending the meeting so you need to register via eventbrite. The link to the zoom meeting will only be sent to registered attendees on the day of the meeting, around about 6pm. Keep an eye out for the email and check your spam just incase.

Do prepare yourself in advance by downloading the zoom client.

Posted by Murray Steele on Apr 25, 2020

April 2020 Meeting

The April 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 6th of April, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). The venue this month is provided by…

bzzzzt

vmmmmwwemmwmmmph

PhysicalProximityError: meetings of > 2 people are currently forbidden

That's right folks – while we all collectively do our part to battle COVID-19, LRUG too must adapt for this brave new world of staying the hell indoors.

The good news is that we've done some testing and we think we can hold a decent version of LRUG online, from the safety of our own respective homes. The very kind folks at Cleo have loaned us their generously-appointed Zoom account and we're going to try running the meeting using that this month. There are likely to still be a few rough edges while we learn to translate our super-polished absolutely-no-faffing-around-ever-with-laptops-and-projectors high-production-value process into this new medium, but we will get there in the end.

Full registration details are given below. We will only be sending out joining details to people who have registered, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda #

Food & Drinks #

Hopefully you have some to hand. Or you could always nibble on that hoard of toilet paper? Anyway.

We've got two talks for you in April; we've got room for a third, and we desperately need more for the rest of year (cough talks@lrug.org cough), but anyway, where's what we've got so far:

How to take control of code quality #

Joel Chippindale:

We all know how valuable it is to keep the quality of your code high. Working on a high quality codebase is more enjoyable and enables us to deliver value much more effectively for our users and yet, time and again I hear engineers saying, “I am not allowed to spend sufficient time on code quality”.

This talk clarifies the value of maintaining a high quality codebase, gives you guidance on how to talk about this to help you get the support of your colleagues and managers for spending time on this and also outlines some key practices that will help you achieve this.

1. LRUG April 2020 - Joel Chippindale - How to take control of code quality
2. How to take control of code quality
3. How to take control of code quality

Music Experiments in Sonic Pi #

Rob McKinnon:

Let's celebrate Sonic Pi's v3.2 release, scheduled for 28 Feb! Sonic Pi's an open source Ruby code-based music creation and performance tool.

Rob's presenting a few experiments in Sonic Pi, covering oddities such as:

• negative melody
• Jianpu (numbered musical notation)
• just intonation
• microtonal music - 19 EDO (Equal Division of the Octave)
• interfacing with MIDI controllers over USB and bluetooth BLE.

Also Rob will walk us through a memory management improvement PR to Sonic Pi - that may have made it into the release.

Afterwards #

Afterwards… well, that's a good question. Obviously there's no pub, but we invite you instead to conjure up the image of a gently roaring fire, and perhaps to open a beer or other beverage while holding that image in your mind, and then think to yourself that it's really a wonder to be alive at all, even in strange times such as these, and really doesn't it demonstrate how much we all rely on each other, on our neighbours and colleagues and friends, and gosh darn it we shouldn't forget that when this is all over, that we truly do need each other, and we shouldn't take each other for granted, and dammit Billy I just gotta say it that I love you dude, I know I shoulda said it before all this, but I want to say it now so you know, you're a good friend Billy, you really are, and thanks for being there for me.

Or there's always telly.

Registration #

Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our README paying close attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though there's no pub or venue. Basically they are good rules to generally live your life by.

Secure your place #

You can register to attend via eventbrite.

It's vital that you register because we will only be sending out the meeting connection details to those registered attendees. So keep your eyes peeled for an email in your inbox on the day.

Some of you may already be living your days in Zoom meetings but if not, and if you want a head start, you can make sure you have the Zoom client by visiting their download page.

So that's that. All that remains to be said is

REMAIN INDOORS

REMAIN INDOORS

REMAIN INDOORS

Posted by James Adam on Mar 24, 2020

March 2020 Meeting

The March 2020 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of March, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). The venue this month is provided by Makers and is in their offices, on Commercial Stret. Full venue and registration details are given below.

Agenda #

Food & Drinks #

Not only are Makers providing the venue for thie month's meeting, they're also being kind enough to provide some food for us. Thanks again Makers!

I got an email from the Government the other day #

Stuart Harrison says:

Email has been around for a long time, predating even the Internet, and despite the best efforts of big tech to monopolise our communications, it's still the most popular way to for people to communicate online. This ubiquity means it's a really easy wayf or Government to keep in touch with us, but email is a tricky thing to manage, running mailservers can be a faff, and email as a service solutions can be expensive. In this talk I'll go through a potted history of email, talk about a tool that the Government Digital Service have developed to make email easier for goverment agencies, and a Ruby gem I've build to make it even easier for Rails devs.

My first Rails bug report #

Alex Balhatchet says:

Story time! Here's the bug I found, how we determined it was a bug in Rails 6, how we dealt with it including working around it and submitting the bug report, and finally getting to remove our workaround once the bug was fixed and the new Rails was installed :)

Tech for good with Ruby on Rails #

James Hand and Alan Bridger say:

Giki Social Enterprise uses Ruby on Rails to help people live sustainably. We'll talk about what we do and why Rails is such a good framework for helping people to make sustainable and healthy choices.

London Ruby Events #

Jairo Diaz says:

I am going to tell you about the Ruby events in London that I am organising such as the Ruby Hacknight and Ruby London Jobs and other events for the community that are the most common. I will also mention different event formats which I have experienced and found useful for different purposes.

Afterwards #

We should be finished these talks by 8pm. Usually we head to a local pub afterwards to talk about what we've just heard and get to know our fellow attendees. We'll see what Makers suggest for which is their preferred watering hole and keep you posted if we know in advance.

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 at the talks and afterwards in the pub.

Venue #

The address of the venue:

Makers
50-52 Commercial Street
London
E1 6PL

See on a map

Registration #

You can register to attend via eventbrite.

The venue has a hard limit of 70 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 Feb 20, 2020