Sessions at RubyConf Argentina 2011 on Wednesday 9th November

Ruby is the most flexible language out there, imposing no limitations on the
developers, giving all the expressiveness possible. Or so we think. But there
are languages pushing dynamic features and expressiveness far beyond what is
possible in Ruby. Some are old, like Lisp and Smalltalk, some are just
emerging, purely experimental languages, like Ioke or Newspeak. In this talk,
we will take a look at some of these languages and what they can do that Ruby
can't. What does it mean, to be homoiconic? How does a language without
keywords work? Can I dispatch in more than one direction? And what is partial
evaluation?

So, there's this "NoSQL" thing you may have heard of, and this related thing called "eventual consistency". Supposedly, they help you scale, but no one has ever explained why! Well, wonder no more! This talk will demystify NoSQL, eventual consistency, how they might help you scale, and -- most importantly -- why you should care.

We'll look closely at how Riak, a linearly-scalable, distributed and fault-tolerant NoSQL datastore, implements eventual consistency, and how you can harness it from Ruby via the slick Ripple client/ORM. When the talk is finished, you'll have the tools both to understand eventual consistency and to handle it like a pro inside your next Ruby application.