has_many :through

Wow, RubyConf was awesome. I'm sure by now you've read all the various blog reports on the sessions and the werewolf attacks. Aside from some stupid, amazingly loud all-night construction across the street from my hotel room, the conference was great and I had a superb time. It was very cool to see how far alternate Ruby VMs have come, and I expect the next year to be very interesting in that area. By the way, RejectConf has become too mainstream. What's up with doing it in a real conference room with A/V support and everything? And what about the beer?

Thanks to everyone who introduced yourself to me as a reader. (Though in the future you might want to wait until I've washed my hands and left the bathroom.)

The QCon panel last week was fun too. The topic was When is Rails an Appropriate Choice? James Cox did a nice job of running things, and I got to spend an hour talking with Obie Fernandez, Charlie Nutter and Ola Bini. (There were some last-minute changes in the lineup.) The panel was recorded on video, so I'm guessing InfoQ will make that available at some point.

Oh yeah, some news. Last week I started work at Pivotal Labs here in SF. Pivotal is a real powerhouse consulting firm specializing in web app development and does work in both Java and Ruby on Rails. The Rails developers there are top-notch and I'm really happy to be part of such a talented team. If you haven't been reading the company's coding blog Pivotal Blabs, you've been missing out. While I was having fun consulting and getting to work on lots of different things, I was missing having a regular schedule and co-workers who lasted more than a short time. This way I get the best of both worlds. I also get to work in an environment with a solid commitment to good development practices. My new job title is "Senior Agile Engineer", which should tell you something even if it mystifies the bank next time I apply for a loan.