I was having it out with my wife on the telephone for the beginning of this talk.

Main points:

  • Test
  • KISS/YAGNI
  • Do what you want
  • Hack often
  • Automate
  • Eliminate pain
  • Have fun

Don’t burn out. Use autotest. Learn new things at conferences. Do pair programming. In fact, I’ve done gang-bang programming, where one guy is typing with the computer projected and a bunch of other backseat drivers are yelling out code. The guy is only allowed to type what someone else says.

Q/A time:

  • Person with question: So it seems like a lot of people use the ruby mailing list to submit patches rather than using the tracking system. WTF?
  • Hodel: Yeah, I don’t know. Matz?
  • Matz: I like email

  • Hodel: There you go, Matz uses email as his tracking system

  • Person with question: What’s your editor of choice?
  • Hodel: Vim [that’s right]