🔗 Seven things I know after 25 years of development

This is a loose transcript of a keynote I gave at the EuRuKo conference in September 2024. The video of the talk is here. Unfortunately, I only could talk in recording, but it was a great honor nevertheless. The topic is pretty important to me, so I decided to share a slightly edited transcript for those who prefer text form.

I have been writing software for about ~25 years. For 20 of those, I have been using Ruby as my primary language. I’ve made some contributions to the language and other open source. I write a lot about Ruby, and I maintain the Ruby Changes project, which some of you probably heard of.

I am kind of principal engineer in the US company Hubstaff, but only “kind of,” because…

The most important thing about me is that I am Ukrainian who serve in the Armed Forces. Currently, I am not in a combat position but doing other things that I am better at (and the rest of my activities are happening besides these duties).

I got into the army not because I am very militaristic or like fighting but because I have a duty to protect my homeland.

It is the same for many Ukrainians.

There are all kind of people serving in our Armed Forces currently, and I have a small personal project of translating poets who serve in the army into English.

So the actual title of the talk is

It is still about development and Ruby, but I allowed myself to draw some parallels with my experience as a Ukrainian. I hope it makes the talk richer. Nothing too graphic/disturbing, I promise.

Let’s get to the matter, those seven things I wanted to share.