As my train heads back to Sheffield from Edinburgh it’s time for a brief reflection on Scotland on Rails 2009.
Looking towards the east coast
The conference
It was even better than 2008! Great job @alancfrancis, @mathie and @paulanthonywils on attracting so many top speakers.
US invasion
It was interesting to note that the vast majority of talks were delivered by speakers from across the pond. So here’s a rallying call to UK-based Rubyists (including me, of course): let’s follow the example of our cross-Atlantic fellows and submit some proposals next time!
TDD and BDD (and EDD and CDD)
Probably the biggest theme throughout the conference – exemplified by the four consecutive talks in the main room on the Friday afternoon – was the consensus on the importance of testing properly. In short: we developers should
- test all the time
- use BDD with an “outside-in” approach to drive app development, and adopt Cucumber
- stop using fixtures (and instead look towards using Object Daddy/Factory Girl/Machinist to generate objects)
Until next time
What a great few days in Scotland! Roll on next year’s conference…
