The San Francisco Ruby Meetup Group

Testing, BDD, Rails, APIs, Couchbase!

February 12 · 6:30 PM
RPX Corporation

It's not your Test Framework, it's You

The BDD hype cycle is over. Recently, there’s been a lot of backlash against popular BDD libraries like Cucumber. Some developers blame their test frameworks for brittle test suites and long build times. Others go so far as to claim that acceptance testing is simply not sustainable, period. In this talk, we’ll do some root cause analysis of this phenomenon with shocking results - it’s not the test framework, it’s not the methodology, it’s you. You’ve abused your test framework, you’ve cargo-culted the methodology, and now you’re feeling the pain. We’ll show you a way out of the mess you’ve made. We’ll discuss the main problems BDD was intended to solve. We’ll show you how to groom your test suite into journey, functional, integration, and unit tests in order to address build times. We’ll teach how to mitigate against brittleness and flickers, and how to let your tests reveal the intent of the application and actually become the executable documentation we’ve been waiting for.

Over the past five years, Matt Parker has practiced BDD and collaborative specification by example at a variety of companies - from a multinational financial corporation spanning the globe and employing 80,000 people, to a self-funded two person startup. He's made all of the mistakes there are to make, but thankfully learned a thing or two along the way. He's now an agile consultent at Pivotal Labs where he helps clients get the most out of BDD.

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Using Rails with Javascript MVC frameworks like Backbone

Transforming your Rails app to an API and integrating with front-end frameworks like Backbone using a single page application.

Interaction techniques between the client-side app and the server
Building an API using rabl (https://github.com/nesquena/rabl) or rails-api (https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api)
How to properly structure a Backbone app
Client-side and API authentication
Caching techniques
Common pitfalls and gotchas

About the speakers:

Chris Barton is one of those rare engineers that knows every line of code of the frameworks he works with by heart. He is Amoeba's web framework expert (http://amoe.ba), and is an active contributor to Rails, Errbit, and several popular Ruby gems. Chris studied both Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Iowa.

Daniel Jabbour is one of Amoeba’s cofounders (http://amoe.ba), and has a passion for bringing new ideas to life as well as building awesome teams and improving development process. Daniel also has significant web, scaling, and big-data experience, and has consulted for startups and Fortune 500s in the New York and San Francisco areas for over a decade. When he isn't building software, Daniel works on several non-profit projects including Hack the Future (http://hackthefuture.org), a quarterly Hackathon that teaches and inspires kids to code, solder, and build things.

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An Introduction to Couchbase and Ruby

What is Couchbase, why use it, and getting it working with Ruby.

Presented by Jasdeep Jaitla, a Technical Evangelist at Couchbase.

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Please plan to arrive starting at 6:30pm. Presentations will be from 7:00 to around 8:30, then hang out and talk until 9:00. Food and drinks will be provided.

Note: prior to the event we will need the real names for all of the attendees in order to provide a list to security for the building. If you are attending and your Meetup handle isn't your full first+last name, please email to [masked] and let me know so you can get in! Thanks for understanding. See the directions listed above for how to get to our office.

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Joanne

oh well missed this great talk. please share. Thanks!

0 · February 12
Andy Neuschatz

The BDD talk was great. I didn't have questions only because it was so complete! Will you be sharing slides? (Ideally with voiceover..)

0 · February 12
Chris Simpson

If by some slight chance.. this was recorded... I would love to see it... thx.

0 · February 12
Mason Jones

People are pulled off the waiting list as others cancel their RSVPs, in the order in which they were added to the waiting list. The final attendee list will be set as of 11am tomorrow morning.

0 · February 11
Ed Yu

I'm in the South Bay so it'd be nice to have someone let me know whether I should drive up (in the waiting list). thanks

0 · February 11
Chris Simpson

Agree. Need a larger venue or at least the option to switch to one.

0 · February 11
Ed Yu

I see there are some spots that opened up and I'm on the waiting list, can I come?

0 · February 11
Lasse Christiansen

Last minute commitment to a friend came up.

0 · February 11
Mason Jones

The recording remains to be seen, but unfortunately it might not happen this time around. We'll see what we can do, of course!

Regarding the size, SF Ruby Meetups are unfortunately (or fortunately!) always very popular, and our office simply can't manage ~150 people!

0 · February 7
Mary Wong

Will this be recorded for the wait listers?

0 · February 6
Scott Holden

45 cap, 90 waiting? Venue may be a bit small...

0 · February 4
Mason Jones

I've updated the listing with all of the presentations, and details on getting us real names for building entry (sorry that we have to do that). Looking forward to it, thanks all.

0 · January 31
Snuggs

"Require" as in send a message to you? Or will the meetup name be assumed? I'm coming from Manhattan NYC and just want to make sure.

0 · January 27
Marshall Smith

Sounds perfect!

0 · January 14
Jake Bellacera

New to this!

0 · January 14