The Crystal Language and Internet of Things with Ruby!

Next Saturday, Oct 22, 2016, the London Ruby Unconference will take place!

Many thanks for the support of all of the attendees, we are almost sold out and we are down the last couple of tickets!

In this post, Eleanor McHugh and Ju Liu have shared with us a short description about themselves and the topics they have proposed for the Unconference!

The Crystal Programming Language by Eleanor McHugh

Jairo: Please tell us a little about yourself.

Eleanor: I live in London and have been programming in Ruby since 2001. Before that, I worked on embedded control systems of one type or another in C, Assembler and Visual Basic. My day job revolves around secure networking and digital identity with a sideline in Go which I've been playing with since 2009.

I recently discovered Crystal and am looking for an excuse to use it for a substantial project.

Jairo: What is the topic you proposed?

Eleanor: The Crystal Programming Language.

Jairo: How would you introduce your topic in an interesting fashion to a person that has (at least) a basic Ruby programming level?

Eleanor: Crystal is Ruby for those times when you want native code that runs fast and a Go-like concurrency model.

Jairo: What could be a nice practical application of the things someone would learn in your session?

Eleanor: How to write basic programs in Crystal and possibly some stuff around networking and crypto.

Jairo: Will you be doing any hands-on demo in your session?

Eleanor: I'll do a demo if I have time to prepare one and there'll be code for show-and-tell. If there's no time to try out some simple coding exercises, then I'll be around in the hallway afterward to join anyone who fancies hacking on stuff.

Jairo: Do people attending your session need any specific requirements or prepare something prior to attending the session?

Eleanor: Not a hard requirement but a *nix laptop with Crystal installed will allow you to play along. See https://crystal-lang.org/docs/installation/index.html for installation instructions.

Internet of Things with Ruby by Ju Liu

Jairo: Please tell us a little about yourself.

Ju Liu: I was born in a metopolis in China, then moved as a kid to the sunny Italian countryside. I got a degree in Computer Science and cofounded a consulting company in Turin, where I learned Ruby. After some time, I decided to start a new adventure and moved to London. I love to solve hard problems and build amazing products. When I'm not doing that, I'm probably rock climbing.

Jairo: What is the topic you proposed?

Ju Liu: Using Ruby to control the sensors on your Raspberry PI.

Jairo: How would you introduce your topic in an interesting fashion to a person that has (at least) a basic Ruby programming level?

Ju Liu: Turning a LED on and off is extremely interesting, believe me!

Jairo: What could be a nice practical application of the things someone would learn in your session?

Ju Liu: You could build an alarm system, a cat feeder, a weather station, the possibilities are endless :)

Jairo: Will you be doing any hands-on demo in your session?

Ju Liu: Yup, definitely, I will bring loads of sensors so that we can try to hack on them together.

Jairo: Do people attending your session need any specific requirements or prepare something prior to attending the session?

Ju Liu: If you have a Raspberry PI do bring it :)

Many thanks to Eleanor and Ju Liu for these short interviews and for your contribution with these sessions for the Unconference.

If you have not bought your tickets for Saturday... Tickets are on sale here!

Please join us for a great day of Ruby!