Topic: Why Ruby and Rails?

Languages are interesting animals. They can evoke great unity or spark potent dissension. A geek is to their language or operating system as a jock is to their favorite sports team - wholly, and sometimes unreasonably, devoted. That's been my life with RPG for over a decade.

Then a few years ago I started doing RubyOnRails development on Linux. After the excitement of learning something new wore off I realized something different and special was occurring in the world of Ruby and Rails - specifically, the Ruby and Rails community are prolific in recognizing patterns, and, in organized fashion, developing automations around those patterns to expedite the building of technology solutions. As of Oct 8th there is now a freely available and formally supported port of the Ruby language and Rails web framework for IBM name PowerRuby.

Attend this session to learn more about all of the components that make the Ruby language and Rails web framework so successful and plain old fun. Topics covered will include Ruby, Rails, ActiveRecord, gems, bundler, social coding, agile practices, Convention Over Configuration, and test driven development.

About the Presenter

Aaron Bartell is co-founder of PowerRuby.com, a partnership with IBM to bring the Ruby language and Rails framework to IBM i. His history takes him through many years with RPG and Java programming, but his current focus is bringing the many cool realities of RubyOnRails to IBM i.

He enjoys being part of the IBM i community through forum participation, article writing and providing open source software on his personal website - MowYourLawn.com. Aaron finds value in pursuing how he can use his abilities to benefit those in need. He started the site SoftwareSavesLives.com as a mechanism to raise money for digging clean water wells in Africa, feeding starving children, and camps for neglected children. Aaron lives with his wife and five children in southern Minnesota and enjoys playing guitar, studying the Bible, and learning about other people's beliefs.

Aaron accidentally bought "skinny jeans" but refused to take them back because they were such a great deal. His wife doesn't like the jeans because they are bright red - maybe why they were on sale? Who knows why they were on sale, but Aaron does know they sure do stretch well when taking long strides trying to escape bears in the Minnesota woods. Warning: Portions of this biography might be slightly fabricated.