RailsConf re-cap featuring Sandi Metz

RailsConf just wrapped up and we want to share the best bits. And the best bit? Sandi Metz.

Going to have a movie night and watch the video of Sandi Metz's amazing talk "Get a Whiff of This." After the talk we'll do some hallway-track style discussion.

Most code is a mess. Most new requirements change existing code. Ergo, much our work involves altering imperfect code.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that every big mess consists of many small ones. Certain small problems occur so frequently that they've been given names, and are collectively known as "Code Smells".

This talk shows how to take a pile of perplexing code, identify the "smells", and surgically apply the curative refactorings. It breaks a messy problem into clear-cut pieces, and proves that you can fix anything without being forced to understand everything.