One of the most critical and often overlooked (and abused) elements of any web application is the JavaScript component. In the Rails world, there is a constant and expensive circle of instrumenting, optimizing, and scaling, which can quickly wear down a team and seed funding. This talk dives deep into super JavaScript nerdery to massively “rethink” the way a Rails application is designed and put into production. I have implemented and deployed this for a variety of sites when Rails performance and scaling became overly complex and expensive. With just a (beautiful) few lines of JavaScript, scale and performance became a non-issue. Furthermore this technique also facilitates moving “high traffic” components into better and faster implements with limited effort.
Chris Williams is the curator of JSConf, owner of Iterative Designs, and VP of OurParents. More commonly known, internetwise, by the handle of voodootikigod, he has been known from time to time to fancy a good beer. With a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech, he has been a network security developer for the DOD, Security Engineer for TSA, and a parallel entrepreneur. In terms of Ruby, I have whole slew of Ruby/Sinatra/Rails/etc projects from a directory service, legal office groupware, automated patent aggregation and analysis tools, and a full stack call center system.