Speaker: Russ Olsen

Author of "Eloquent Ruby" and ‎Vice President at Cognitect
Russ likes to think that the technology is there to solve problems for people, not the other way around. Russ started his career doing that other kind of engineering, the sort that involves electricity, gears and getting dirty. Pretty rapidly the wonder of computer programming lured Russ away, which probably explains why most of his fingers are still intact today. Since turning to coding, Russ has worked on everything from 3D design and image processing software to database query engines and workflow systems. Russ first discovered Ruby back in 2000 when he went looking for a simple programming language to teach to his son. The seven year old lost interest, but Russ never did and he has been building increasingly sophisticated systems in Ruby ever since. Russ also spends a fair bit of time promoting Ruby via public speaking and he helped found RubyNation, a regional Ruby conference held each Spring in Northern Virginia. Russ has also written extensively about Ruby in the form of two highly regarded books: The first, Design Patterns in Ruby was published in 2008 and is a complete reworking of the classic Gang of Four patterns for a modern dynamic programming language. Russ’s second book Eloquent Ruby is a guide to writing idiomatic Ruby. Eloquent Ruby was an instant hit in the Ruby and Rails community when it was published earlier this year. Russ also has been secretly enamored with parentheses since a very early age and lately has been dabbling in Clojure. Russ is also a Vice President of Consulting Services at Cognitect.

Find Russ Olsen at

Talk: To the Moon

Russ Olsen Elsewhere

Tracks

Covering innovative topics

Wednesday, 4 March

  • Architecture Improvements

    Next gen architecture, Arch over the full lifecycle, Bleeding edge tech in legacy, Cognitive biases in architecture, Evolving Architecture.

  • Big Data Frameworks, Architectures, and Data Science

    As big data tools and architectures continue to evolve, how do you architect and select technologies that work now but are also future-proof?

  • DevOps and Continuous Delivery: Code Beyond the Dev Team

    As infrastructure becomes as malleable as code, a unified approach from reqs to ops is needed to deliver promised breakthroughs.

  • Engineering Culture

    The best teams and companies talk about how to create amazing engineering cultures.

  • Java - Not Dead Yet

    Java is evolving to meet developer and business needs, from lambdas in Java 8 to built-in support for money types rumoured for Java 9.

  • Mind Matters at Work

    How theories from neuroscience and psychology can help us better understand IT professionals and discover what really motivates them.

Thursday, 5 March

  • Docker, containers and application portability

    People building stuff for and with containers showing why application portability is important, and what can be done with expanding ecosystems.

  • Evolving agile

    Reflecting on and learning from successes and failures in applying agile approaches since the creation of the Agile Manifesto and exploring ways of applying agile practices to increase business value.

  • HTML and JS Today

    The state of the art in web technologies. What is important to know and why?

  • Internet of Things

    What software devs need to know to design and build for instrumented environments and reactive things, what new issues and questions it raises.

  • Modern CS in the Real World

    How modern CS helps you tackle today's problems.

  • Reactive Architecture

    How to create reactive systems is more than simply learning a framework. Thinking in a reactive way helps you to design responsive architectures.

  • The Go Language

    The Go Language - Concurrency, Performance, Systems Programming.

Friday, 6 March

  • Architectures You've Always Wondered About

    Get a rare look behind the scenes and get to see the architectures of the most well-known sites with the least known architectures.

  • Low latency trading

    The 'race to zero' continues. Join us to learn about the latest tecniques being deployed to optimise order routing and execution.

  • Open source in finance

    Financial services have changed from OS as cost-saving to a competitive weapon. See open source projects that are disrupting the finance industry.

  • Product Mastery

    Come have fun with fellow PMs and BAs as you learn about Value Management. We'll even tell you dark tales of Snarks, Hippos and other obstacles.

  • Taming Microservices

    Tackling the challenges of microservices in practice.

  • Taming Mobile

    Mobile is no longer the Next Big Thing but a requirement for your business. Hear from those who have implemented successful mobile systems.