Git has become the standard version-control system in the open-source world — and increasingly, in much of the commercial world, as well. Many people are introduced to Git with a few basic commands, and so long as they stay within the world of those commands, they’re fine. But when things go wrong, or when they need to use some advanced commands, such as rebase and squash, they get very confused and surprised. In this talk, David Baumgold tells us how (and why) to use some of Git’s more advanced commands. Not only will you know what these things do, but you’ll understand how they can help you to improve your development process.
Emacs has long been a popular editor for programmers of all languages. But given that Emacs is written (and extended) in Lisp, it’s no surprise that Lisp hackers have a particular affinity for Emacs. In the case of Clojure, there have been several generations of Emacs modes and tools over the years. In this talk, Bozhidar Batsov, the current maintainer of the CIDER Emacs development environment for Clojure, describes the history of these tools, why he prefers them, and how the tools and the language have both evolved over time.
Regular expressions are a great way to identify patterns in text. However, the syntax of regular expressions has long mystified (or infuriated) many programmers. In this talk, Lea Verou introduces regular expressions, showing their syntax, but also how and when you would want to use regular expressions. If regular expressions have scared you in the past, then this talk will provide you with a gentle introduction.
Vim is the latest, most popular version of the classic vi editor under Unix/Linux. Vim has a very large following of programmers who want to have a very fast, customizable editor that lets them get things done quickly. (I’m personally an Emacs user, but even I will admit that people can be quite productive in Vim.)
Ben Orenstein, a podcaster and developer at Thoughtbot, is well known for his mastery of Vim, as well as his entertaining talks that demonstrate how and why to use this editor. In an era of IDEs and graphics, it’s worth considering using Vim. Watch this talk, and you’ll see why!
Pry is an improved REPL (read-eval-print loop) for Ruby programmers, replacing the standard IRB tool. You can use Pry as a debugger, as well. In this talk, Joel Turnbull demonstrates how we can use Pry as a debugger, to analyze, fix, and even plan Ruby and Rails applications.
It’s often hard for people to understand what Git is doing, because it’s so different from other version-control systems. In this talk, Sam Livingston-Gray suggests that one way to improve your understanding of Git is to understand some math, and particularly graph theory.
Bo Jeanes demonstrates some absolutely amazing things that you can do with ssh. If you use ssh, then you will likely learn a bunch of new tricks from watching this talk. If nothing else, seeing text-based slides is itself worthwhile.
Angela Harms gave this talk at Ruby Midwest 2011, and addressed the issues associated with pair programming. If you have ever considered pairing, but were reluctant to try it, then this talk may give you some good food for thought on the subject.
Chef is a popular system for configuring, deploying, and managing servers. In this talk from Big Ruby 2013, Joshua Timberman introduces Chef, and describes how it can be used in ways that you might not have expected.