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Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk

talk 11 connections

Ayush Newatia's second wroclove.rb 2023 lightning talk — 'a Ruby conference talk with no Ruby code'. Recounts his experience as mentor on the Rails World website project. In March/April 2023 the newly founded Rails Foundation posted looking for a junior developer to build the website with a senior mentor; Newatia applied for the mentor role, met Amanda (who runs the Rails Foundation) and the junior Shona. His rules: don't write any code himself, guide via written guidance, code review, feedback and pair programming; deflect all credit to Shona and absorb any blame — a hard mindset with only downside externally. The site lives under rubyonrails.org, is a Jekyll repo with originally no JavaScript. Client asked for modals and carousels; he initially considered teaching an esbuild pipeline but decided it was too nightmarish for a junior. Instead they used native custom elements to encapsulate modal/carousel behavior in classes, referenced from a simple script tag (as 'we did 15 years ago'), with a turbo import on top. The site works without JavaScript too. Reflects that he learned more as mentor than Shona did as student — he would have thrown all the complexity in himself. Calls out Andy Kroll's First Ruby Friend program (run by the Brighton Ruby organizer) as a great way for experienced developers to start mentoring.

type
lightning-talk
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
Mentoring concept
Entirely about Newatia's mentorship of a junior developer
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
The project delivered through the mentorship
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
The foundation initiated the junior+mentor project
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
Custom Elements concept
Chose native custom elements instead of an esbuild pipeline
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
Jekyll tool
Rails World site is a Jekyll project under rubyonrails.org
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
Recommends Andy Kroll's program as a way into mentorship
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
about
Turbo tool
Site uses a turbo import on top of the custom-element scripts
person Ayush Newatia
authored
Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk talk
Newatia's second wroclove.rb 2023 talk of the day
from_talk
Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk talk
Principles Newatia set for himself on the project
from_talk
Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk talk
Newatia's closing call to action
talk Mentoring the Rails World Website Lightning Talk
presented_at
Presented in the wroclove.rb 2023 lightning-talk session

Provenance

Created in
wroclove.rb 2023 Lightning Talks 2026-04-17 22:11
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