Meetings

June 2022 Meeting

The June 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of June, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

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

Agenda

Get your PRs merged, rebasing like a Pro

Daniel Magliola says:

You have a complex PR to submit. You've tried to keep it small, but sadly you need to make many different changes all at once. Getting there took a lot of effort and your branch has more than 30 commits with fixes and reverting of dead ends.

You know reviewing this will be a nightmare for your colleagues, and more importantly, it will be almost impossible for someone in the future to understand what happened if they ever look at the history.

In this talk we will look at how Git branches work, and how to manicure them using Rebase to build a commit history your colleagues will love you for.

The messy middle – 5 Software Engineering lessons from a 5 years startup journey

Alfredo Motta says:

These are some of the lessons that I have learned over my 5 years at a Fintech startup that went from 0 to 100k customers and grew the team from 4 to 50 people. I will present some of the software architecture tradeoffs I have been presented with and I am still puzzled about today.

Afterwards

When the talks come to an end we can't quite replicate the convivial atmosphere of hanging out in a local pub with your fellow attendees, but we do leave the zoom call running to let those interested chat for a while. If you have some ideas about an alternative approach, then let us know 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 Frederick Cheung on May 15, 2022

May 2022 Meeting

The May 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of May, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

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

Agenda

Mining a gem: how to safely discover, extract and share useful code from your Rails app

Duncan Brown says:

We recently extracted a gem for talking to Google BigQuery from 5 different Rails applications at the Department for Education I'll talk through the process of pulling the code out, how to test gems that work with Rails, figuring out how to deal with divergence among existing implementations of the same functionality, and how we're driving adoption of internal open source at DfE.

  1. LRUG May 2022 - Duncan Brown - Mining a gem: how to safely discover, extract and share useful code from your Rails app

GOV.UK’s response to COVID-19

Leena Gupte and Rosa Fox say:

Leena and Rosa have been Senior Developers/Tech Leads on the GOV.UK Coronavirus team. The team’s work began in March 2020 when a service they built over a weekend had nearly 50,000 registrations on the day it launched. Two years later, after building lots more services (using Ruby… of course) and serving millions of users, the GOV.UK Coronavirus team finally disbanded.

Rosa and Leena will take LRUG through a timeline of GOV.UK’s response to the pandemic. We will discuss what we delivered, our successes, failures and how the team supported each other to cope. We will share how Ruby/Rails and tools such as the GOV.UK Design System enabled us to build and deploy critical services at pace.

Afterwards

When the talks come to an end we can't quite replicate the convivial atmosphere of hanging out in a local pub with your fellow attendees, but we do leave the zoom call running to let those interested chat for a while. If you have some ideas about an alternative approach, then let us know 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 Murray Steele on Apr 22, 2022

April 2022 Meeting

The April 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 11th of April, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

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

Agenda

Using React in a Ruby Project to Dynamically Generate PDF Documents

Panos Matsinopoulos says:

In the Ruby world, we traditionally address the PDF generation problem using gems like Prawn and PDFKit or libraries like whtmltopdf.

Recently, in one of our Ruby on Rails projects in which we wanted to generate PDF documents for invoices, we decided to use another programming language and technology: React and AWS Lambda.

In this talk, we will be covering how we did it, what were the challenges and what pros and cons over the incumbent tools for Ruby.

  1. LRUG April 2022 - Panos Matsinopoulos - Using React in a Ruby Project to Dynamically Generate PDF Documents 1

A parse parse pitch: using JSON and custom parsers to create efficient flexible data structures.

Winston Ferguson says:

JSON and custom parsers let you do neat things like: complex pricing, map data to 3D models, auto generate images…

  1. LRUG April 2022 - Winston Ferguson - A parse parse pitch: using JSON and custom parsers to create efficient flexible data structures

Afterwards

After the formal part of the meeting, if you want to keep on LRUGging a handful of us usually stay on the zoom call for a bit of a chat. It's not quite the same as hanging out together IRL, but it's better than nothing while things remain pandemic-y. If you have some ideas about an alternative approach, then let us know 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 Paolo Fabbri on Apr 04, 2022

March 2022 Meeting

The March 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of March, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

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

Agenda

Running full builds after merging? 🥱: Ship faster with git tree based caching

Christian Gregg says:

Fast deploy pipelines are an important facet of a fast moving engineering team; allowing you to ship smaller, safer units of value to production, faster, and more often.

In this talk we'll be covering how using git tree objects can allow you to run CI less or potentially not at all (in a not scary manner :) after merging your changes into your default branch, allowing you to get straight to deploying! 🚂

In cases where your team can precompile deployment artefacts your changes could make it into production in under 60s. If your team uses Heroku or Buildpacks to deploy your code, I'll point you to some tricks to help you do just that by detaching building and releasing your application to production!

  1. LRUG March 2022 - Christian Gregg - Running full builds after merging? 🥱: Ship faster with git tree based caching
  2. 🚢 Ship faster with git-tree based caching

The Browser Environment - A Systems Programmer's Perspective

Eleanor McHugh says:

A quirky introduction to writing realtime web systems with Sinatra as the backend. The highlight will be WebSockets but there'll also be coverage of DOM manipulation, AJAX/fetch, and timer events.

  1. LRUG March 2022 - Eleanor McHugh - The Browser Environment A System Programmer's perspective

Afterwards

After the formal part of the meeting, if you want to keep on LRUGging a handful of us usually stay on the zoom call for a bit of a chat. It's not quite the same as hanging out together IRL, but it's better than nothing while things remain pandemic-y. If you have some ideas about an alternative approach, then let us know 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 Murray Steele on Mar 06, 2022

February 2022 Meeting

The February 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 21st of February, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

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

Agenda

It's our annual ⚡️lightning⚡️ talks event. All short talks, all the time.

Javascript in Rails: A New Hope

Frederick Cheung:

Tired of slow webpack builds and daunting configuration files? Find out how the new css-bundling and js-bundling gems can roll back the years and make javascript in rails fast and simple again.

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Frederick Cheung - Javascript in Rails A New Hope

Getting past enemy images

Pablo Dejuan:

Enemy images hinder our communication with people when we need them the most: to agree with another colleague over a code review, to interview a third party, to have an important conversation with our boss or direct report (technical or non-technical topic). In this talk we will raise awareness and cover one way of overcoming the initial enemy image to get a better outcome for us and our team.

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Pablo Dejuan - Getting past enemy images

The tale of the 60+ second page loads

Jared Turner:

A monstrous mystery and a head-scratching hunt. Follow along to discover why, just why, is that darn page so slow!?

  1. The tale of the 60+ second page loads
  2. LRUG February 2022 - Jared Turner - The tale of the 60+ second page loads

solargraph-dead_end

Fritz Meissner:

The awesome dead_end gem gives really good feedback on where that elusive missing end keyword is hiding in your Ruby file. At a thoughtbot hackathon a few of us worked on a solargraph plugin for it so you can get this feedback in your editor. Come hear about the results!

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Fritz Meissner - solargraph-dead_end

Introducing ViewComponent

Simon Fish

The view layer is the Wild West of Rails. Let's look at how ViewComponent helps you break down and test your Rails views.

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Simon Fish - Introducing ViewComponent

A Little Pessimism Never Killed Nobody

Marija Mandić

Come join and hear my experience on a real life example of concurrency problem and different approaches to fixing it.

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Marija Mandić - A Little Pessimism Never Killed Nobody

Metaprogramming I Do In My Side Projects That My Colleagues Won't Let Me Do In The Real App At Work :-(

PJ

Metaprogramming is fun but, more importantly, makes you feel really clever. However, it's not always the best fit for codebases with multiple contributors. Let's take a few minutes to explore some neat tricks you can do when you don't need to worry about other people understanding your code 😀

  1. LRUG February 2022 - PJ - Metaprogramming I Do In My Side Projects That My Colleagues Won't Let Me Do In The Real App At Work :-(

How to think about Learning

Hywel Carver

Why do we learn? How do we learn? How do we learn well? 3 mental models that will answer the first 3 of those questions and change how you think

  1. LRUG February 2022 - Hywel Carver - How to think about Learning

iPad giveaway

Cleo

The kind people at Cleo, a fintech chatbot fighting for the world's financial health, have kindly offered to sponsor the meeting to the tune of a couple of iPads. Everyone that attends the meeting will be entered into a prize draw to win one of these iPads and the winning names will be drawn from a hat*.

Cleo are currently hiring so check out their careers site, or apply directly for their two open roles for backend ruby engineers and senior backend ruby engineers.

Thanks Cleo!

* We may not use an actual hat.

Afterwards

The best we can do at the moment is promise that a few of us will hang out on the zoom call after all the talks are done to blather on for a bit. It's a poor substitute for actually meeting up in person, but we'll persevere with it. If you have some ideas about an alternative approach, then let us know 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 Frederick Cheung on Jan 13, 2022

January 2022 Meeting

The January 2022 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 10th of January, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm). Still online.

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

This month, we have decided to offer something different: a pub quiz about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and more.

LRUG Pub quiz

Are you proud of your knowledge of Ruby and Ruby on Rails? Invite your friends, and win bragging rights. Or simply invite them and enjoy spending time with them.

The quiz will have 4 categories, and each category will have between 20 and 30 questions. The 4 categories are:

  • Ruby
  • Ruby on Rails
  • General computing
  • London

Afterwards

It's been nearly 2 years of this and we still haven't worked out a good replacement for hanging out in the pub after the meeting. That said we leave the zoom call running for a little while after the talks for folk to chat. We encourage the speakers to hang around too if they can, so you can ask them questions you weren't able to during the meeting, or that you felt were too niche to share with the wider group. If you've got any ideas for something better, then please do let us know at organisers@lrug.org. Thanks!

Registration

Prior to attending you must familiarise yourself with our README paying particular attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we float on screens like so many tiny programming postage stamps.

Secure your place

Our Zoom meetings are artificially constrained by our miserly purses, so you need to register via eventbrite to secure a place. We only send the link to the zoom meeting to people who have registered. It goes out around about 6pm on the day of the meeting, so keep an eye out for it and check your spam just in case.

Give yourself a head-start by downloading the zoom client (lol, as if you don't already have it).

Posted by Alessandro Proserpio on Dec 24, 2021

December 2021 Meeting

The December 2021 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of December, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

Full registration details are given below, and please do note that the zoom meeting url is only sent to registered attendees, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda

Enough coverage to beat the band

Kevin Murphy says:

The lights cut out. The crowd roars. It’s time. The band takes the stage. They’ve practiced the songs, particularly the covers. They’ve sound checked the coverage of the speakers. They know the lighting rig has the proper colored gels covering the lamps. They’re nervous, but they’ve got it all covered.

  1. LRUG December 2021 - Kevin Murphy - Enough coverage to beat the band
  2. Presentation Resources
  3. Blog post: Ruby's Got You Covered

When ActiveRecord meets CTE!?

Johnson Zhan says:

CTE (Common Table Expression) is one of the ways we handle complicated SQL queries. However, ActiveRecord does not support CTE directly so I used to write some raw SQL to implement CTE. Now, I found there is a useful gem called activerecord-cte which makes things different.

  1. LRUG December 2021 - Johnson Zhan - When ActiveRecord meets CTE!?

Finding, hiring and onboarding junior Ruby developers

Alex Balhatchet says:

The Ruby community in London has a huge number of junior developers, largely thanks to bootcamps like Le Wagon and Makers Academy. This talk describes my experiences finding, hiring and onboarding junior devs. The aim is for the hiring managers in the room to feel more confident hiring junior devs for their teams, and for the junior devs in the room to feel more confident asking for support and learning opportunities.

  1. LRUG December 2021 - Alex Balhatchet - Finding, Hiring and onboarding junior Ruby developers
  2. Finding, Hiring and onboarding junior Ruby developers

Afterwards

It's been nearly 2 years of this and we still haven't worked out a good replacement for hanging out in the pub after the meeting. That said we leave the zoom call running for a little while after the talks for folk to chat. We encourage the speakers to hang around too if they can, so you can ask them questions you weren't able to during the meeting, or that you felt were too niche to share with the wider group. If you've got any ideas for something better, then please do let us know at organisers@lrug.org. Thanks!

Registration

Prior to attending you must familiarise yourself with our README paying particular attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we float on screens like so many tiny programming postage stamps.

Secure your place

Our Zoom meetings are artificially constrained by our miserly purses, so you need to register via eventbrite to secure a place. We only send the link to the zoom meeting to people who have registered. It goes out around about 6pm on the day of the meeting, so keep an eye out for it and check your spam just in case.

Give yourself a head-start by downloading the zoom client (lol, as if you don't already have it).

Posted by Alessandro Proserpio on Nov 28, 2021

November 2021 Meeting

The November 2021 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 8th of November, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

Full registration details are given below, and please do note that the zoom meeting url is only sent to registered attendees, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda

Failing better w/ Load Shedding & Deadline Propagation across services

Christian Gregg says:

As services start to split off from your majestic monolith, cascading failures as a single service or endpoint slows down can become a recurring problem which very quickly can lead to service unavailability. Implementing load-shedding and deadline propagation across your services is a technique which can help you provide a more resilient service to your customers. This talk will introduce some of the concepts explored in CGA1123/loadshedding-experiment-ruby & CGA1123/shed.

  1. LRUG November 2021 - Christian Gregg - Failing better with Load Shedding & Deadline Propagation across services
  2. Failing better with Load Shedding & Deadline Propagation across services

Why Rails is still relevant for startups in 2021

Chris Parsons says:

With the rise of single page JavaScript apps, lo-code, and mobile-first, is Rails consigned to the legacy dustbin of frameworks last cool in 2008? The answer is emphatically “no” - Rails is as relevant as ever for startups in 2021. Chris will talk about how Rails has supercharged the early stage of his new startup, LollipopAI, and how Rails gave them quick experiments, good-enough domain modelling and tooling that just works.

  1. LRUG November 2021 - Chris Parsons - Why Rails is still relevant for startups in 2021
  2. Why Rails is still relevant for startups in 2021

Service Objects and Domain objects differences

Patricia Cupueran says:

Understanding what a service and domain objects are. Distinguishing the difference between procedures and objects. Why using service objects is a bad idea. Advantages of using modules, concerns and PORO's instead of service objects.

  1. LRUG November 2021 - Patricia Cupueran - Service Objects and Domain Objects differences

Afterwards

It's been nearly 2 years of this and we still haven't worked out a good replacement for hanging out in the pub after the meeting. That said we leave the zoom call running for a little while after the talks for folk to chat. We encourage the speakers to hang around too if they can, so you can ask them questions you weren't able to during the meeting, or that you felt were too niche to share with the wider group. If you've got any ideas for something better, then please do let us know at organisers@lrug.org. Thanks!

Registration

Prior to attending you must familiarise yourself with our README paying particular attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we float on screens like so many tiny programming postage stamps.

Secure your place

Our Zoom meetings are artificially constrained by our miserly purses, so you need to register via eventbrite to secure a place. We only send the link to the zoom meeting to people who have registered. It goes out around about 6pm on the day of the meeting, so keep an eye out for it and check your spam just in case.

Give yourself a head-start by downloading the zoom client (lol, as if you don't already have it).

Posted by Murray Steele on Oct 28, 2021

October 2021 Meeting

The October 2021 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 11th of October, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

Full registration details are given below, and please do note that the zoom meeting url is only sent to registered attendees, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda

Solargraph: A Ruby language server to make your editor smart

Fritz Meissner has been working on the fledgling solargraph-rails plugin and wants to tell us all about it:

Language servers like Solargraph can give code editing superpowers to your favourite editor (Emacs, Vim, VSCode, etc.). I'll talk about the Language Server Protocol and its advantages over editor-specific plugins, as well as how Solargraph learns about your Ruby. I'll also talk about the challenges that Rails poses for such tooling and how solargraph-rails attempts to overcome them.

  1. LRUG October 2021 - Fritz Meissner - Your editor, Language Server Protocol, and Solargraph
  2. If The Shoe Fritz - Solargraph talk at LRUG October 2021
  3. If The Shoe Fritz - A conversation between your editor and a language server
  4. The solargraph-rails plugin
  5. The solargraph project

How denormalizing our Postgres turned great

Thierry Deo co-founder and lead dev at Pennylane is going to tell us all about optimising their postgresql db:

It's often considered best practice to normalize the database structure to avoid data redundancy and incoherence. In Pennylane's accounting platform we've found that this actually does not always help with data coherence, and even introduces additional complexity in managing data access. Our combination of denormalizing some of our data, enhancing some of ActiveRecord's methods, and introducing default behaviors in our application models has enabled us to greatly simplify access control management and given us confidence that our production data is in a consistent state.

  1. LRUG October 2021 - Thierry Deo - How denormalizing our Postgres turned great

Memoization: My Favourite Antipattern

Joel Biffin says:

As Rubyists we love to use built-in language features to set ourselves apart for the rest. It's part of what makes programming in Ruby so enjoyable! Memoization is no exception to this. But, what if we don't really need all of that memoization? Is memoization an anti-pattern in its own right?

  1. LRUG October 2021 - Joel Biffin - Memoization: My Favourite Antipattern

Afterwards

We do our best to keep the zoom call open for a while after the talks for those attendees that want to chat for a bit afterwards. It lacks the general cacophonous ambiance of a pub, and you'll have to bring your own drinks and chips, but it's better than nothing. The speakers may be available so you can ask them questions you weren't able to during the meeting, or that you felt were too niche to share with the wider group. If you've got any ideas for something better, then please do let us know at organisers@lrug.org. Thanks!

Registration

Prior to attending you must familiarise yourself with our README paying particular attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we float on screens like so many tiny programming postage stamps.

Secure your place

Our Zoom meetings are artificially constrained by our miserly purses, so you need to register via eventbrite to secure a place. We only send the link to the zoom meeting to people who have registered. It goes out around about 6pm on the day of the meeting, so keep an eye out for it and check your spam just in case.

Give yourself a head-start by downloading the zoom client (lol, as if you don't already have it).

Posted by Murray Steele on Sep 20, 2021

September 2021 Meeting

The September 2021 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of September, from 6:20pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).

Full registration details are given below, and please do note that the zoom meeting url is only sent to registered attendees, so please do make sure you do it.

Agenda

How to use flamegraphs to find performance problems

Jade Dickinson will be running an interactive workshop:

Slow Ruby code can be a puzzle, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this talk you will see how fun it can be to use flamegraphs to find performance problems. You’ll enjoy this talk if you know you have slow areas in your Ruby application*, and would like to learn how to find the code responsible.

You can find out more about what you need to prepare for the workshop via Jade's mailing list post about it.

Afterwards

The zoom call will stay open after the workshop is finished for a little bit if attendees want to chat for a while. It's not as good as shouting across a table at the Singer Tavern, but we make do with what we can. The speakers may hang out so you can ask them questions you weren't able to during the meeting. If you've got any ideas for something better, then please do let us know at organisers@lrug.org. Thanks!

Registration

Prior to attending you must familiarise yourself with our README paying particular attention to the code of conduct which applies to all attendees, even though we float on screens like so many tiny programming postage stamps.

Secure your place

Thanks to capitalism we can only host a limited number of people in our Zoom meetings, 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.

Give yourself a head-start by downloading the zoom client (lol, as if you don't already have it).

Posted by Chris Lowis on Aug 24, 2021