RubyConf 2023 – A Ruby Renaissance
Late last year our team members headed to beautiful San Diego to join the incredible Ruby community at RubyConf 2023. Attending the conference is always a highlight, and we were excited to participate as a sponsor and engage with attendees, learn and share expertise, and have some fun.
The Ruby community is special. It has an incredibly inclusive and supportive culture that feels different than other languages. It was great to take some time to come together and enjoy the community’s hard work, network, and plan for the future.
Ruby in Renaissance
The Ruby community has always thrived with a strong international group passionate about the language and its benefits. The excitement and use cases shared from the discussions at RubyConf demonstrate that the popularity of Ruby continues to rise. It feels like we are on an upswing.
This was apparent with enthusiasm shown during the opening of the conference, which included a Broadway level performance by Ruby community member, Catherine Ricafort McCreary, and then a wonderfully uplifting and funny speech by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. It was a reflection of what it’s like to be a part of the Ruby community today.
Ruby powers some of the world’s largest brands and popular websites and will continue to do so in the future. One of the industry’s biggest fans and stewards of Ruby is Shopify, which powers 20% of the world’s e-commerce websites. From small shops to billion dollar companies, Ruby continues to be popular due to its stability and maturity.
Ruby Is Inclusive
Ruby’s impact and relevance are strong in today’s market. One of the most striking differences about the Ruby community is how inclusive and forward-thinking it is. The Ruby community is a guidepost for how open source can demonstrate true partnership and kindness. The diversity and sincerity of this community are unparalleled within the tech industry, and sets a great example for all open-source communities. Accessibility and inclusivity are must-haves for any software language, and the Ruby community feels like it is ahead of the pack.
The care the community takes in welcoming new members is evident by its extreme approach to mentorship and guidance. Being at RubyConf was a testament to these values, as everyone was so welcoming and excited to encourage new developers and first-time attendees to share their experiences, especially through the Scholars program
And, that’s a good thing, since Ruby developers are in such high demand worldwide. In Hired’s 2023 State of Software Engineers Report , Ruby on Rails was considered “the most in-demand skill for software engineering roles, creating 1.64x more interview requests for the developers proficient in it.”
Ruby Central and Open Source
The first day of the conference was a devoted “community day” in which developers from all around the world could get together and code. Any open-source project could pick a table and invite other community members to work on it together. Everyone we met at the conference agreed that the day was a huge success.
One of the most interesting talks that we attended was given by Samule Giddens on State of the RubyGems . He talked about Ruby Central, RubyGems, and open source as a part of the Ruby community. His insights into the kind of volunteer work needed to power an organization such as RubyGems were fascinating and it really showed how thoughtful and motivated Ruby people really are.
For example the talk spoke in depth about someone needing to be on call for RubyGems 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in case something should go wrong.
We are so lucky to take part in open source as part of our work at FastRuby.io and OmbuLabs . A huge thank you from us to Ruby Central for continuing to put on incredible conferences.
New Ruby Advancements and The Future
On Christmas Day Ruby 3.3.0 was released. During the conference, Shopify engineer Kevin Newton presented details about the new Ruby Parser, which had everyone buzzing with excitement. It was an excellent talk that is well worth a watch, one of our favorites of the week.
IRB received important updates in this new Ruby release. Maintainers of that project were present at the Community Day and the Open Space area of the RubyConf, so atendees were able to meet them and help with features and bugs.
Our team recently shared an overview of what to expect for Ruby 3.3.0, highlighting the upcoming focus areas. Be sure to check out the article.
In need of a passionate Ruby partner to help take your Ruby application to the next level? Send us a message!
