Sessions at RailsConf 2011 with slides on Tuesday 17th May

David Heinemeier Hansson’s Keynote.

“Fat Models, Skinny Controllers” they scream. Pushing your logic down to the model layer is a key step to improve testability, maintainability, and code quality. But many developers now have “junk drawer” models that don’t realize these goals. Having a fat model isn’t enough!

In this session we’ll explore techniques for improving your models including:

• Extracting code into libraries and gems
• Encapsulating logic into processor objects
• Using the presenter pattern
• Deciding between class and instance methods
• Guidelines to judge code quality and complexity

When you leave this session you’ll be dying to refactor!

Are your methods timid? Do they constantly second-guess themselves, checking for nil values, errors, and unexpected input?

Even the cleanest Ruby codebases can become littered over time with nil checks, error handling, and other interruptions which steal attention away from the essential purpose of the code. This talk will discuss strategies for writing your Ruby classes and methods in a confident, straightforward style; without sacrificing functionality or robustness. In the process, we’ll cover concepts and techniques including:

• The narrative style of method construction
• The four parts of a method
• Three strategies for dealing with uncertain input
• Massaging input with coercion and the Decorator pattern
• Lightweight preconditions
• Exterminating nils from your code
• The chaining and iterative styles of method construction
• Eliminating conditionals with the Special Case and Null Object patterns
• Isolating errors with the Bouncer and Checked Method patterns