Supporter Talk by Ubicloud: Build a Cloud in Thirteen Years

In his talk at RubyConf 2024, Daniel Farina discusses the evolution and current practices of Ubicloud, a company he co-founded, which is building an open-source alternative to established cloud services. The talk delves into the unique engineering approaches used at Ubicloud, particularly the decision to utilize Ruby—specifically not relying on Rails—which he suggests is unconventional within the Ruby community. Farina outlines the development history and functionality of key libraries employed in Ubicloud's infrastructure, highlighting the following core concepts:

Ruby's Role: Farina emphasizes the practicality of using Ruby over alternatives, detailing his shift from forming a small team at Heroku to developing extensive cloud services at Ubicloud.
Key Libraries: The talk presents crucial libraries like SQL, OMM, and Roa, focusing on their development process and integration within Ubicloud’s architecture. He notes that these libraries maintain high quality, with Jeremy Evans, a key contributor, ensuring seamless updates and minimal issues over years of evolution.
Development Practices: Farina highlights the advantage of deploying every merged pull request immediately, facilitating real-time feedback and reducing complexity in regressions. He notes an established practice of keeping all bugs closed, ensuring high standards of quality in the software libraries used.
Performance of Ruby Libraries: Emphasizing the performance and efficacy of libraries used, he discusses their features and how they accommodate rapid development cycles without sacrificing functionality or stability. He challenges the ideas around Ruby’s capabilities, positioning it as a robust and economical language for current development needs, contrary to the notion that it is only suited for rapid prototyping.
Request for Community Support: Farina concludes with a call to action, encouraging the audience to test their services and provide feedback in the form of bug reports to foster further development.

In essence, Farina aims to broaden the community's view on Ruby's applications in infrastructure and cloud computing, promoting an understanding of its practical strengths and long-term viability in the industry.

Supporter Talk by Ubicloud: Build a Cloud in Thirteen Years
Daniel Farina • November 13, 2024 • Chicago, IL • Talk

In 2011, I joined a tiny team at Heroku, managing servers with a custom Ruby program. By 2023, I co-founded Ubicloud, developing the fourth generation of such a program...again, in Ruby. Unlike 2011, the choice of Ruby in 2024 raises questions, even from Ruby programmers.

The Ubicloud team's engineering approach is unusual: most of the team has used Ruby for infrastructure cloud programs, none of them depending upon Rails. I'll share our unconventional practices and assessment of Ruby's strengths, aiming to broaden perspectives on Ruby's capabilities and applications.

RubyConf 2024