So I went, I saw, I learned some stuff... RailsConf 2006 was impressive and disappointing at the same time. I'll touch on the negative first, because I don't the reader to have that overshadow their opinion, because it didn't mine. I left with a positive impression.
Too superficial... I have no idea whether my experience at conferences is odd, but many of the sessions talked about generic how-to and why, instead of showing code. The Asterisk and Rails session was great ... and it sucked. They speaker had a good sense of humor and went gave a good overview of why someone would use Asterisk and then Rails, but there was only about a minute of code. So, if I'm a novice sitting at a conference on mathematics, why would I assume I'm going to understand everything? I wanted more code. There were a few sessions I attended where I only vaguely understood what was going on. DHH's (David Heinemeier Hansson) speech was great - he went in depth, went philosophical - and even though I barely understood the code, what he said made sense and I got a real sense that his vision of Rails was something that I could adhere to. And then there was the token, I've got a product that will do xyz (which, incidentally, all of us want), and here's how it works, but I'm not going to show you any code. Crap. If I wanted a sales pitch, I could have gone to their website. Loved the talk, thought the content was inappropriate.
The good side were the few people I met who made a network and systems guy like myself feel really good. Jan Kneschke made everything worth it - really. I wish I hadn't blown Saturday night like I did (a story for another time and another site), so I missed out on trying to get together with him yesterday to go over a few ideas I had about using lighttpd to handle my security concerns surrounding the impending use of a Linux distro in my rack (something I never thought I'd see). The great thing about his session is that not only did he touch on some philosophical issues he was dealing with - the undertone and focus of the talk was how to tweak lighttpd to do better at running not only Rails applications, but also deal with issues bandwidth people like me hate: waste - he also went into detail on how things like mod_proxy are supposed to work and what is going to be done to fix them (with regards to melding a number of mod_'s into mod_proxy). It seemed that he was focused on doing it right instead of simply trying to please everyone who uses his product (although it was obvious he was open to making improvements and adding features). Anyone who has dealt with the mess that apache has become, is happy to see people like Jan step up to the plate and provide us with a viable (and good) alternative.
There were a few other people I happened to meet through this or that, who could have become part of what I always dreamed would be a stellar company with a bunch of people focused on the right things and doing things right the first time. Matt and I ran through a lot of ideas and I think solidified the approach we are going to try taking to Rails hosting and project development. Sometimes it sucks that I have such a good job. (Most of the time, it is really good, though.) I wish I could actually dedicate more time to some of the ideas I have - I'm sure many of us are in the same position, though.
In the end, I'm convinced. If you want to do scripting and you want to do it well, use ruby. If you want to do web front-ends for mysql stuff and you want to do it well, use Rails. It is amazing how a tool like ruby and rails can create a new paradigm for development. It is amazing that I actually found out about it when I did...
