Sessions at RubyConf 2011 about Code Quality on Thursday 29th September

Do you always seem to be fixing bugs in your software project? Are you spending more time fixing defects that actually implementing new behavior? If so, this talk is for you.

In the mid-90s, Steve Maquire wrote a book that strongly effected the way I developed software. Primarily writing in C and C++ in those years, the struggle to deliver bug free software was especially a challenge. In the book "Writing Solid Code", Steve gives sage advice on the problems of developing large software projects and the challenges that go with making sure your softare actual does what you think it should.

Although as Ruby developers we are no longer using C to deliver our large projects, the challenge of writing solid, reliable code is still before us. Based on Maquire's advice and my own years of Ruby experience, this talk will show developers tools, techniques and practices that they can use to improve their software and begin writing solid code.

As Rails programmers we talk a lot about the beauty, not only of the products we build, but the code we write. Why is this beauty important? Can we think systematically about the emotional effects of the code we are writing?

Code is meant to be read and used, not just by machines, but perhaps even more importantly by people. How people are affected by the products they use has been studied extensively in the field of industrial design, can we apply these lessons to the code we write?