Today at RailsConf I got my ass kicked… in the good way.

The first whooping came during TJ Murphy’s session: Flexible Scaling: How to Handle 1 Billion Pageviews. Strong blows include:

• “SELECT-less Reads”
• Tons of interesting info. about using the Amazon Cloud
• His monthly server costs for Warbook (an awesome game built in RoR which has a bazillion Facebook users) and their monthly income (more than the server costs)
• Caching/memcache, ActiveRecord tweaking
• He essentially did Warbook by himself, assisted by the almighty power of Google and folks who are willing to help by providing pointers to good info.

I got a chance to talk to him for a moment afterwards and told him that I really enjoyed playing Warbook until the jackass 13-year-old gangs started to beat my solo-self to a pulp repeatedly. I also mentioned that I was grateful for that because that experience took my smack-talking to the next level.

The second bit of major beatdown came during Erik Kastner’s session: Microapps for Fun and (Micro) Profit (his addition, not mine!).

• Learning and self-gratification (in terms of making what you want to make) is personally profitable, and a worthwhile endeavor. I cheered inside when he said that his microapps have made $7 with Google AdSense.
• Limiting your project to one day makes you toss features that aren’t actually needed and gets something into the world.
• Rails isn’t the hammer for every web application nail… there are good reasons to use Camping, Sinatra, Merb, etc. (and even better… sample code demonstrating how to use Sinatra.

The especially painful Chuck Norris Roundhouse kicks were Erik’s comments regarding get your stuff out in the world now. Pare down, do the minimum you have to, get your alpha OUT. (As he pointed out, this is nothing new… Getting Real, “Real Artists Ship,” etc., etc.) It was a message I needed to hear.

Amy Hoy also chimed in about shipping now vs. entering analysis paralysis and relayed some personal anecdotes that I’d paraphrastically summarize as:

• It made me feel good to get something done and out.
• It made me more credible… I’ve shipped, so I don’t have to feel like a hypocrite when I (rightly) encourage others to ship.
• It’s just straight-up badass to deploy something you’ve worked on.

I miss my RailsConf2007 posse, but I’m having a great time with my RailsConf2008 posse. I’ve met TONS of cool people, and we’re only half-way into it.

Categories: Ruby on Rails