Monday, September 7, 2009

The 1st day of RubyWorld Conference 2009 (Afternoon)


This photo is "Matsue Open Source Lab." in front of Matsue station.

I attended these sessions:

  • For the standardization of Ruby
    • speaker: Katsuhiko Kakehi
    • Ruby is the language raised by the community.
      • Many usages
      • Many implementations
      • Many suggestions
    • When community grows up...
      • Need of reusability and portability
      • Need of standarization
    • In general, the standardization of programming languages has been worked in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22.
      • WG4 - COBOL
      • WG5 - Fortran
      • WG9 - Ada
      • WG11 - Binding Techniques
      • WG14 - C
      • WG16 - ISLisp
      • WG17 - Prolog
      • WG19 - Formal Specification Languages
      • WG21 - C++
    • At past, Java also had been studied for ISO/IEC JTC 1, but faded away.
    • ECMAScript and C# are standardized by ECMA, and then ISO/IEC JTC 1 ratifies it.
    • How do we standardize Ruby?
    • It's impossible that we aim international standards in a single leap.
    • At first, we aim JIS standards.
      • until 2010
      • core language set
      • minimum libraries
    • And then JIS will suggest to ISO/IEC JTC 1.
    • What is needed for the standardization?
      • Clarifying language specifications
        • To follow all implementations
        • To decide in each implementations
        • No to decide as specifications
      • Functions already exists (not implementation methodology)
    • periodic revision and maintenance for standards
    • The former supervisor of SC22 in Japan is me.
    • Current chief officer of Ruby standardization is the former of me.
  • Significance of standardizing Ruby
    • speaker: Matz
    • Features of OSS in this theme
      • Source codes are opened
      • Community Development
    • Community has many contributors and, in general, they are voluntary.
    • Developers contirbute as hobby.
    • Recently, developers as business have increased.
    • Features of Community Development
      • No roadmaps
        • e.g. Next release will be in Christmas day, in any year :-)
      • No promises
        • e.g. Bugs may be fixed when someone will fix them.
    • But it remains wrong with no roadmaps and no promises because Ruby has been used in some enterprise domain recently.
    • We should address concerns.
      • support by corporate
      • support for education
      • publication
    • Programming languages have very long lifecycles.
      • Fortran: from 1954
      • LISP: from 1958
      • COBOL: from 1959
    • Normal software has normal lifecycle.
      • shorter than programming languages'
      • longer than we expect
    • Inconsistency in programming languages
      • It's hopeful that programming language never changes because of compatibility and stability.
      • It's hopeful that programming language ever changes because of enchantment as a language development.
    • take a balance
      • Stability
        • brush up
        • compatibility
        • support for each implementations
      • Possibility of development
        • possibility toward the future
        • correspondence for changing circumstances
        • correspondence for new technologies
      • cooperation
        • not to alienate the community
    • Now I'm still exploring how do we do when standardizing Ruby.
  • Panel Discussion: How to Promote the International Standardization of Ruby
    • panel: Yoshihiko Hara
    • panel: Masaya Mori
    • panel: Shunichi Kajisa
    • panel: Takashi Shitamichi
    • panel: Katsuhiko Kakehi
    • panel: Matz
    • moderator: Shuichi Tashiro
    • At last matz says:
      • Human resources for standardization are not enough, so I want to watch us in the long.
        • We aim standardization level not only as "Hello World" but also as Ruby implementation codes of Ruby on Rails.
      Q from attendeeHow many are you communicating with the RubySpec team?
      A from panelNo communications currently. When we will standardize as accomplishable level, then we will communicate each.
  • Effective Teams
    • speaker: Bruce A. Tate
    • Build great software
      with small teams
      of happy programmers
      • What is the "Great"?
        • Generally, we have to choose the two in [better, faster, cheaper]
        • Java or C++ optimizes the computer.
        • But we want to optimize ourselves, and then optimize our times because time is expensive.
        • Beauty is the worthy goal.
        • It's characteristic only for Ruby that values like "love", "enjoy" are important.
      • I'm asked several times How smaller can I make my team?
        • I answer "volleyball team".
          • nine-person, at most
          • six-person, normally
          • in beach-volley, only 2
      • Why a small team is good?
        • Imagine a best developer and a worst developer in your neighbor
        • How many difference does their salary have?
        • In U.S., it has about 2 times on average.
        • How many difference does their productivity have?
        • 5 times? 10 times? The worst developer may bring negative results.
        • So it's better that you spend moneys for best developers.
        • And there are no difference that you make the team bigger.
      • Leverage Point
        • Language
        • Death to meeting
        • Pair all the time
        • Test everything
      • Programmer in happiness = Passionate
      • Passion killers
        • Ugly Foundations
          • DCE
          • CORBA
          • OpenDoc
          • EJB1, EJB2, EJB3
          • JSP
          • Generics
        • Turnover
        • Blame
          • Fulfilling the accountability is necessary.
          • But it isn't good to accuse than necessary.
        • Overtime
          • Working long hours never make release time earlier.
      • Passion builders
        • Learning
        • Language
        • Trust
  • Panel Discussion: The Future of Human Resource Development for Ruby
    • panel: Ikuo Takeuchi
    • panel: Yasushi Kuno
    • panel: Eihiro Saishu
    • panel: Motoshi Hara
    • moderator: Tetsuo Noda
    • The young ages are the who should make innovations.
    • The senior ages are the who should support the young ages.
    • Missing things in Japan are ICT literacies of the senior ages.
    • ICT vocabulary at Japanese is incomplete.
    • Each administrative organizations are not unified on ICT.
    • The Japanese investors also have no ICT literacies.
    • The Japanese society is not adoptable for ICT literacies.
    • The better goal is to bring up not only creators' level but also citizen's level.
    • The time is over that creating good things makes good sales.
    • I think it's different between the human resource to create and the one to use the creations.
    • "Kosen" college and Programming contest in Japan
    • Exploratory IT Human Resources Project (The MITOH Program) acts as an extension of Programming contest.
    • Exploratory IT Human Resources Project (The MITOH Program) acts as a golden path of training.
    • The students with great ideas are from outside of information science in sometimes.
    • ICT is just only basic literacy, so there's no need for establishing course of ICT studies.
    • I think Recently, too much teaching makes the person who always waits instruction forever. It's not for business.
    • ICT campany that adopts Man-Month model is bad.
N.B. These summaries may be imprecise.
There are a good session and a bad session. At first, "Panel Discussion: How to Promote the International Standardization of Ruby" was the worst panel discussion I have ever heard. Because IT WAS NOT DISCUSSUION AT ALL. Other panels speaked ad, damned ad and statistic ad. Matz speaked just only that (and Q&A). Charles Nutter tweeted like this, well, panels are normally discussing on the other panel discussions in Japan.

But second, Bruce A. Tate' session is the best, this session doesn't become filled strangely. Moreover, its Q & A is the hottest. So I omit the Q & A part because these are an experience for who took in this conference.

No comments:

Post a Comment