On Tuesday we played host to the first Belfast Ruby event of the year, welcoming back our Ruby regulars and a multitude of new faces. With over 70 people in attendance, The Rumble Laboratory was abundant with aspiring Rubyists.
The evening aimed to inspire newcomers to make the jump to Ruby and Rails, as well as show them how they can get started.
Our sponsors very kindly supplied food and drink, with Brewbot crafting a beer especially for Belfast Ruby and Shopkeep supplying an array of pizzas and beer.
The Talks
After some initial mingling, the talks began. First up was our very own, Nicklas Persson, who introduced the crowd to Ruby and the popular Ruby framework, Rails. After giving a brief history about its creation, Nick explained how to get started with Rails, walking us through the process of setting up a new project using Terminal.
Following fellow Rumbler Nick, I talked about using Git as version control. I explained how Git can be used in our software development workflows and why we should make use of it. After my talk, I gave a live demonstration, illustrating how to get started using Git - from initialising remote and local repositories, to pushing changes to Github and managing branches.
The final talk of the evening was led by our guest speaker, Kieran Graham, a member of the talented team behind Brewbot. His talk, appropriately named "Ruby on Ales" gave attendees a brief but encouraging introduction to Ruby as he highlighted the readability of Ruby's syntax, with comparisons to Objective C.
Kieran Graham talking Ruby. Photo by Filly Campbell.
It was great to meet so many new faces keen to learn more about Ruby and Rails and we hope the talks and discussions have inspired everyone to give it a go themselves.
Positive Reviews
We received plenty of positive reviews about the event, some attendees even blogged about their experience. Have a read at Toby's write up and Chris' blog post. We also received a thumbs up from many of the attendees on Twitter.
Great time @BelfastRuby last night. pizza, beer, and people talking about a better human/robot language. what more can you ask for?
— tim_jenkins (@tim_jenkins) February 5, 2014@BelfastRuby @brewbot @hamstarr thank you for a great night of tech/design/grub/beer/banter! I'm looking forward to the next one!
— Fiona Mc Laughlin (@FifiMcL) February 4, 2014@BelfastRuby Awesome introduction to Ruby tonight. Great talks from @KeizGoesBoom @takete @kierangraham
— Matthew Budde (@TPSKalamity) February 4, 2014Further Reading
If you're interested in catching up on Tuesday's talks, we've compiled a list of the speaker's presentations and resources/further reading.
Nicklas Persson
One or two things you always wanted to know about Ruby on Rails but were afraid to ask
Melissa Keizer
Git'n Started with Version Control
Kieran Graham
Ruby on Ales
Stay tuned for details of the next Belfast Ruby meetup hosted by Shopkeep by following @BelfastRuby on Twitter.