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As Ruby organizations scale, more developers join the team. More developers makes it increasingly difficult to enforce code styles, follow best practices, and document mistakes that were made without relying on word of mouth. While we have tools, such as Rubocop, to check some stylistic components, we lack tooling to document issues and best practices. This talk focuses on strategies and solutions, particularly around best practices, that we employ to help educate and accelerate nearly a thousand developers, without getting in their way, by providing them information “just in time”. RubyKaigi 2018 https://rubykaigi.org/2018/presentations/jules2689
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The presentation by Julian Nadeau at RubyKaigi 2018 focuses on enhancing productivity and education within rapidly scaling development teams, specifically in the context of Ruby organizations. As teams grow, developers often face challenges such as enforcing coding standards, maintaining best practices, and managing mistakes without overwhelming communication. This talk emphasizes the importance of leveraging automated tests and effective error messaging to address these issues, particularly cognitive overload among developers. Key points discussed in the video include: - **Cognitive Overload**: Defined as receiving too much information at once, leading to inefficiency in processing and memory retention. Developers are expected to make thousands of decisions daily, with even a small mistake rate resulting in significant errors. - **Documented Mistakes**: Nadeau underscores the necessity of documenting common mistakes within an organization and how they can negatively impact developer productivity. - **Automation and Testing**: By employing tests, developers can automate the identification of mistakes, which aids in education and improves productivity. This includes implementing tools to check for common errors, such as issues with gem usage or matching files. - **Just-in-Time Education**: The presentation advocates for delivering relevant information and error messages exactly when needed, minimizing cognitive load. Effective error messaging should provide context and actionable steps for resolution. Examples highlighted throughout the presentation include: - **Naming Conventions**: A test created at Shopify to ensure that maintenance tasks and their corresponding test files are named correctly, thereby preventing errors from misnamed files. - **Dependency Checking**: The implementation of checks to ensure that deprecated gems are not reintroduced to the codebase, providing developers with clear messages about the prohibitions and reasoning behind them. - **Style Guides and Tools**: Utilizing tools like Rubocop to enforce coding standards without the need for constant manual oversight, further supporting cognitive ease for developers. Overall, Nadeau's talk concludes with a strong message about the critical necessity for organizations to construct systems of education and documentation that support developers efficiently, preventing cognitive overload while ensuring the maintenance of high coding standards. The ultimate aim is to create a supportive environment where developers can focus on delivering value instead of being bogged down by administrative burdens.
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