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Dave Thomas
Pragmatic Programmers
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EOS JAOO 2000
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Dave Thomas is prominent in the worldwide Ruby community. He co-authored the first English-language Ruby book, runs two Ruby web sites, manages a Ruby Wiki, and is a frequent contributor to the Ruby mailing lists. He has presented Ruby in Europe and the US, in lectures, and to local user and student groups. Dave is a partner in The Pragmatic Programmers, a software consultancy, and co-author of "The Pragmatic Programmer".

The Pragmatic Programmer Show

Abstract
At JAOO 2OOO, the Pragmatic Programmers -- Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas -- astounded the audience with their frightening description of "The Four Coders of the Apocalypse". Don't miss this year's eagerly anticipated sequel, where the hottest topics in software development will be brought to light, including: oil painting, space pens, antagonistic smiley-faces, the Goridan Knot, and satisfying your partner.

What on earth could these disparate topics have to do with software development? Everything, as it turns out. We'll see you there.

Tutorial,"Ruby in a Day":Tutorial, Friday 14 September
(together with Andy Hunt)
Smalltalk was ahead of its time: we're just entering the decade of the untyped, flexible language. And by all accounts, Ruby could well be the language of that decade. Small, but tremendously expressive, Ruby is finding favor among all kinds of developers. From web applications to numerical simulations at NASA, Ruby is gaining popularity and mindshare.

As a developer, you owe it to yourself to have a look at Ruby. Even if you never write a line of Ruby code, the ideas in the language can greatly improve the way you think about design and the ways you implement your programs. And if you do starting writing Ruby, you'll discover the tremendous productivity and readability gains that are possible.

Tutorial attendees will come away knowing how to install, run, and program in Ruby. The language is compact enough that it can be taught in a few hours, but subtle enough that attendees will still be enjoying learning new things many months later. Even if they don't use Ruby as their primary language, attendees will come away with deeper insights into OO programming in general.

Duration: full-day tutorial

Misc. information:
Attendees should be familiar with the concepts of object orientation and programming. Some familiarity with a scripting language such as Perl or Python may help, but is not a requirement. Attendees who program in Smalltalk will find much of Ruby comfortingly familiar.

The tutorial is structured along the first section of our book, "Programming Ruby", a structure which has been well received. The approach we take is unusual: rather than starting with low level details and building up to object-oriented programming somewhere around chapter 20, we instead jump straight in to classes and objects and build from there (after all, we _are_ describing an fully object-oriented language :). The tone of the tutorial is technical but light.
- finding and installing Ruby - some basics: structure, basic types, regular expressions, blocks and iterators - classes and objects - containers, blocks and iterators. Iterators are one of Ruby's coolest features, and we find that most audiences like to spend time exploring these in detail. - methods, expressions, scope, and closures - exceptions - modules and structuring large programs - input and output - threads and processes - the standard library - extensions for network and Web programming - advanced Ruby: the metaclass model, extending Ruby - stuff we forgot

**CHECK THIS**
The inventor of Ruby, Yukihiro Matsumoto, will be attending the conference
**CHECK THIS**
-and we hope to have him step in for a while during the tutorial.
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com

Presentations:

The Pragmatic Programmer Show (Technology, Programming Languages)
Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Programmers , Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Programmers
Wednesday [10:30 - 11:30] Conference Hall




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