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Okay, so I'm Adam, and I want to remind everyone that five minutes of lightning talks are sacred, so you may hate me for the next year. I'm a Ruby developer, and I've been working mostly with Elixir for two years.
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I wanted to tell you something about it. Never mind. In Elixir, we have if-else statements, which are cool. We also have something like ternary operators, so we can write inline if statements. However, we do not have else-if statements, but this is okay. Some things that Millennials want we're not sure we really need. Why do we even need else-if if we can write something like this? We also have switch cases with a default condition set to true. If you don't have a default condition, it will fail. In Elixir, you want to fail very quickly. The equal sign is not really an assignment operator. Even if it quacks like a duck, it's really a match operator.
00:02:06.700
You can see that it can match 2, 4, 4, 2, 3 in this case, but it will fail if you try to match it with anything else. In Elixir, we have maps, which in Ruby we call hashes. You can access an attribute from this map, but you can also pattern match it. You have lists, but you might not really think of them as arrays. The structure you are familiar with, like 1, 2, 3, is really just syntactic sugar in Elixir for representation, where a list contains a first element and the rest of the list, hence we have a head and a tail.
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You can pattern match an empty list, and you can use pattern matching for something more interesting than just assigning a variable. You can create conditions using pattern matching where you render some block based on what was matched. If something is not matched, it will result in an error, which is quite relevant. You can also use pattern matching with functions, not only in conditionals, but you can define multiple functions with the same name. The function that matches the pattern will be evaluated. You also have guards, and the poster child of Elixir is the pipe operator, which allows you to pipe the result of one operation as the first argument to the next function.
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Instead of writing something complex, you can use pipelines, which, as a Ruby developer, might not seem interesting. For example, instead of writing `hunky-dory.reverse.split.upcase`, you might use pipelines to simplify operation chains. However, it may not work well in certain situations and could break on projections, so you can write something like this, which uses pattern matching with cases. This is not necessarily the prettiest solution, but it can be useful.
00:04:11.560
Thanks, everyone! Good evening. I'm Tomas, and I'm a Rails developer as well as a pro to Rails developer. I need to clarify that I'm not a day-to-day developer, which means that in my everyday work, I stand on the product side.
00:04:32.020
First, I have some disclaimers. Please note that this is not a technical talk, and it's also not truly a business talk. I'm fully aware that this is a dev conference; I haven't lost my way. I know where I am. Today, I want to talk about the number of organizations. Most people think of organizations like Amnesty International or Transparency International, but there are also smaller organizations that often go unnoticed. Many jobs within these organizations are invisible.
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They face challenges implementing solutions, often spending hours trying to set systems up. If someone were to assist them with tailor-made applications, it would save them hours of frustration. I could tell you vague statements like 'behave like a change,' but that's not particularly helpful. As I worked with these organizations over the past few years, I wrote a couple of Rails applications for them. It's a bit daunting, but mostly, they need simple web applications for various scaffolds, and Rails is good enough for them.
00:06:55.430
The original thought was that PHP and WordPress would be easier, but I've found that helping them with Ruby is much better. My advice is similar to what is said in an unnamed commercial airline: sit back, relax, and reach out to local communities, as helping out can lead to fantastic experiences. You might not enjoy this talk, but I hope it offers some value.
00:08:44.550
Now, I want to quickly cover interoperability between Ruby and Elixir. My name is Adam, and I work for a recruiting company in Poznan. I'm a Ruby/Elixir developer. You may be wondering why Elixir and Ruby should work together. Imagine building an app in Elixir and needing to call an external web service. Since Elixir doesn't have many libraries wrapping these APIs yet, it’s highly probable that in the Ruby world, you will find a suitable gem for that.
00:09:25.840
I needed to connect to the JIRA API, and I didn't want to build it from scratch in Elixir. Fortunately, there are lots of gems in Ruby for JIRA. The good news is that Elixir and Ruby can work together effectively. I'll show you how it works: there is a port, which is an Erlang library used to run different programming languages in the Erlang virtual machine. Currently, it supports Ruby and Python.
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As an Elixir developer, I want to avoid writing Erlang code, which can be less developer-friendly than Elixir. Luckily, I found a wrapper for Elixir to the Erlang port, allowing me to run Ruby code in Elixir easily. You can start a regular process with this library by indicating where your Ruby code lives in your project. This function returns a process identifier that you can use to call the Ruby code. This can be a simple function that takes a string argument.
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This approach works well, but there are challenges, especially with data structure mapping. Elixir’s data structures like maps differ from Ruby's hashes, which can cause issues. For example, returning a tuple in Ruby is quite simple, and although there are libraries to manage these discrepancies, you'll still encounter challenges when transferring object-oriented structures.
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When creating a Ruby object to connect to an ER client, if I close the Ruby process, the connection gets lost. Therefore, to avoid authenticating with the same credentials each time I call an external API, I serialize those objects, which allows me to receive them in the Elixir environment as JWT tokens.
00:15:33.610
That’s how it works, and I highly recommend trying it out. Moving on to some lighter topics, I wanted to see how many different ideas I can fit into five minutes. I have five topics to cover. One will be about people hiding, which can save you 60 euros a year. Second, why Ruby is not dead. The third will be 'thank you,' and the fifth will be a surprise.
00:16:37.530
People hiding, indeed! Six years ago, I went to a camp with three friends, and we met Andrey, who said we should go to the Rostrum. I didn’t think I could buy tickets quickly enough. He suggested I help organize the conference instead, but I was unsure. After some talks about board games, I realized organizing a conference could be as simple as sending a few emails or making phone calls.
00:18:06.660
So I started managing after-party celebrations. Now, I'm known for organizing t-shirts and parties, never having to buy a ticket again—saving me 60 euros a year! Now, regarding the question of whether Ruby is dead: it's not about the language itself. When clients ask about Ruby, they are often concerned about the community surrounding the language.
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It's about how effectively we can convince developers to use Ruby. I feel enthusiastic about our community's potential. I also want to express gratitude to everyone involved in this community—not just the speakers and organizers but also those who share experiences during parties or discussions after talks. It’s heartening to see all the faces dedicated to this community.
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I have great appreciation for the organizations and sponsors mentioned on our website. I aim to thank those who consistently contribute to making our community vibrant. We’re lucky to have people like Nico who advocate passionately for our community. Let's continue to encourage and support each other in making our events great.
00:20:34.470
As we move forward, we need assistance to organize the next Elixir conference. It can be a lot of fun and is a great way to save money. I hope this encourages you to reach out and help out, and you can even make new friendships. For instance, I met my good friend Michał at a camp, and sometimes the most unexpected scenarios lead to lasting friendships.
00:22:02.100
Now, I want to share a story about my strange experience making friends at a drug camp. We arrived late at the camp, but some folks were waiting for us even at 2 am. Our driver had to make unexpected stops during the trip due to work requirements, but we finally made it. At the camp, we were told where we were supposed to sleep.
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Only two of us had beds while the rest of us, including me, had to adjust. Nevertheless, it was fun getting to know everyone, even in the chaos. This camp taught me how communal experiences and late-night adventures often shape friendships.
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I hope this inspires you to forge connections at conferences and camps. This community thrives on collaboration, support, and friendship. Thank you, everyone! Let's keep the momentum going.