Windy City Rails

By: Zach Bright, Software Engineer

As a software engineer I have had my fair share of arguments conversations about what tech stack I would choose if starting from scratch. I still shy away from taking a hard stance because I believe that decision is tied to the project at hand. However, we are living in the age of Javascript frameworks; people are rushing to adopt one and are more than ready to stand by their decisions. Technologies like node, angular, ember and others are being heralded as the beginning of a new age in technology. But Rails is good at so many things — it can’t just disappear right?

Tomorrow I’m headed to the Windy City Rails Conference and I couldn’t be more excited! Having the opportunity to network with the best and brightest in the industry alone is enough to get me excited — but I think the speakers will help me answer a question that has been burning in my mind for some time now; where exactly does Rails fit into the future of web development?

Among all of the amazing speakers, I am most excited about the talks given by Rebecca Miller-Webster, Chris Ball and Sean Griffin because I think they are going to take a stab at answering my question. The most amazing part is that they are speaking directly after one another, and the order was clearly well thought out.

First, Rebecca is going to lay the foundation for Javascript in a traditional Rails project. Second, Chris is going to build on Rebecca’s thoughts by utilizing Rails as an API with an Ember front-end to build an application. And last but certainly not least, Sean is going wrap things up by talking about designing a beautiful API in Rails with the soon to be released Rails 5.0.

It’s almost too perfect, and I can’t wait to hear what they have to say! Are you attending Windy City Rails?