Best moments from attending RailsConf 2024 in Detroit.
It was my first time attending RailsConf in person and visting Detroit.
In this post, you’ll find my presentation video and a summary of my favorite moments.
RailsConf 2024 was a special one because it was my first time presenting in person. Fun fact: my first presentation at a RailsConf was in 2021 when I delivered a lightning talk.
From RSpec to Jest: JavaScript Testing for Rails devs
The recording can be found here:
👉 You can find the slides for From RSpec to Jest: JavaScript Testing for Rails devs here 👈
The goal of this talk is to make testing JavaScript less scary and fun! Get confident with testing on the front end with Jest and React testing library.
I wish this talk existed a few months ago when I was doing a NodeJS upgrade and had to test and add features to many React components.
RailsConf 2024
Being totally honest, I landed in Detroit with low expectations and curious to see what the conference would be like. A few days past it, here are my favorite moments and learnings:
- catching up with new and existing Rails enthusiasts. I am not the only one who agrees it was a great conference filled with energetic and passionate developers.
- checking in with past and current clients and catching up with them. One of my favorite aspects of being a consultant is that I get to meet lots of folks, and occasionally meet them at conferences.
- finally meeting Gabi Stefanini in person. I first met her at TheConf 2017, in Sao Paulo. Because I was feeling intimated, I didn’t say hi and we kept in touch online. Why am I saying this? If you want to just say hi to someone at a conference, meetup, do it. It might take you 7 years to see them again in person.
- meeting three Get to Senior students. Always great to see them attending conferences, giving talks, and contributing back to the Ruby community. I’m so proud of them.
RailsConf2024 Hack day
Hack Day is my favorite session. Thiago wrote about our experience leading one of the hackday groups and making contributions to Faker last year at RubyConf. This year, I was there just helping out folks who contributed to thoughtbot’s Open Source projects for the first time.
At thoughtbot, we started running a monthly Maintainers sync and we have a document listing what kind of help folks need in our Open Source projects. So I just pulled out that doc and people could choose what they wanted to help with:
- capybara-accessibility_audit: Allow marking tests Pending when they fail audits
- administrate: Fix “search with a filter with arguments” spec
- Superglue: Add erb-lint exception for ERB templates and Initialize TypeScript.
I also walked around the other tables and met other OSS maintainers. That’s how I found out that RubyGems has released a new way of releasing a gem version using GitHub Actions. With Trusted Publications, automatically releasing to RubyGems is much easier. Already added it to faker-ruby ;)
And, I shamelessly asked about this PR on the Rails maintainers table. @tenderlove happily reviewed it and merged it a few days later ✨ A nice HackDay surprise!
Met the original creator of faker-ruby
I was so excited to meet Honeybadger folks. We went for a Walking tour in Detroit. That’s when I met Ben Curtis, co-founder of HoneyBadger and the original creator of faker-ruby.
Honestly, what a unique opportunity! We talked about the beginning of faker-ruby, and discussed some ideas on how to make it even better.
RailsConf 2025: the last RailsConf
Even with RubyCentral announcing that RailsConf 2025 will be the last one, I left feeling refreshed and inspired. RubyConf is going to get even better and regional conferences/meetups will get more support from RubyCentral.
Plus, I won’t have to decide whether I should go to RailsConf or RubyConf anymore since attending both in a year can be tiring and time consuming. With HackDays and other OSS initiatives, I am excited about what’s next for RubyConf.
RailsConf 2024 inspired me to keep being part of a stronger and connected community that will ensure that Rails keeps growing and thriving for the next 30+ years.
I am so thankful for thoughtbot sponsoring me to attend and talk at conferences. In case you don’t know, I’m actually paid to attend/speak at conferences <3
Best RailsConf ever ⭐