IRINA LIKED MY LIGHTNING TALK!!!⚡⚡⚡

I'm giving a full 30 minute version of Gamified Developer Experiences at SF Ruby!!

If you liked the short version, come see the full talk! I can't wait to see you there! 💖

https://sfruby.com/

Thank you to everyone who came up and told me you liked my lightning talk!!! I seriously thought I was bombing on stage, and hearing from all of you that you liked it, and which parts you liked, was enormously validating and a huge relief! ❤️

This is not everyone, because Mastodon has photo limits.

I couldn't stop laughing through @tenderlove 's keynote of all his prior keynotes! It was so nice to go down memory lane and see which ones I was present for, and hear the stories of the ones where I wasn't.

I loved the message - "Try programming for fun"! AI can't program for fun, but we can all build fun and silly things just to learn how they work!

OMG!!! I left this talk with only one takeaway - I have to try herb!! @marcoroth has added syntax trees to erb templates, which has radically improved the DX for linting, debugging, syntax highlighting, formatting, and more!!

https://herb-tools.dev/

Seriously - stop reading my thread and go look at this if you've ever touched an erb template. There's a playground.

https://speakerdeck.com/marcoroth/the-modern-view-layer-rails-deserves-a-vision-for-2025-and-beyond-at-railsconf-2025-philadelphia-pa

I missed this talk when Tess delivered it at the @wnb_rb meetup last month, so I knew I had to catch it this time!

It was really interesting to hear about how her wife added the attributes API, the motivations behind it, and I enjoyed the advice on contributing to open-source.

For my talk at Blue Ridge Ruby, @kevin_j_m offered to review my talk, and kindly told me that he liked my proposal (which was rejected from another conf).

His review, in addition to having good actionable advice that I took, gave me the confidence to present that talk. Seeing myself on his #rubyfriends slide made me teary, and made me feel so seen and recognized. ❤️