RailsClub 2016: Interview with Steve Klabnik

    RailsClub 2016 October 22, there are very few tickets left. Do not delay registration if you are going to go! We publish conversations with our speakers, and today this is Steve Klabnik - a member of Rust core team, an active open source contributor and a very interesting conversationalist!
    He is the author of The Rust Programming Language, Rails 4 in Action, and Designing Hypermedia APIs. He lives in Brooklyn, writes about himself that he "spends too much time on GitHub."

    Steve has already performed at RailsClub in 2012. And we also published an interview with him (for the curious, see here ). Since then, Steve has been busy with Rust, made a lot of interesting things, and we realized that we had to invite him again :)

    I think this publication of ours will be interesting not only to rubists, but also to Rust fans, who are becoming more and more in Russia. At the last meeting, we were approached by guys from the Russian-speaking Rust community rustycrate.ru . Everyone who is interested in Rust after RailsClub is welcome to feel free to join in and ask questions.

    image
    Report at our conference - Exploring Ruby through Rust .
    Ruby is written in C. Many of the classes that we know and love are written in Ruby, some not. By learning how MRI works, we can learn a lot about Ruby. In the talk, Steve will show a fun hack: he will rewrite pieces of the Ruby interpreter in Rust. In the process, we learn a lot about the internal structure of Ruby and how to start hacking C code.

    Under the cut, we give our questions, Steve's answers in the original and our free translation:


    What are you working on now?

    I mainly work on Rust. But language is a huge project, it includes a bunch of everything: I rewrite the official book about Rust, work on the Semver package , work a little on our package manager ... so much to do!
    I also have a third-party intermezzOS project . This is a “learning operating system,” that is, a small OS, and comes with a tutorial for those who have never done system programming.

    I am mostly working on the Rust programming language. But something like a language is super huge, so there's all kinds of things: I'm re-writing the official book, I'm working on our semver package, I'm doing some work on our package manager ... so much to do !
    I also have a side project, intermezzOS. It's a "teaching operating system", that is, it's a little OS, but also a book to go along with it to teach people who have never done OS work how to do it.


    What is Open Source for you?

    First of all, Open Source for me is a collaboration in the development process. Instead of everyone doing their own thing, you work together to achieve your goal. This does not mean that everyone is working on everything, but it means that you make key decisions on the project together. There is always someone who will check your code before it is included in the project. And you try to involve as many people as possible.

    To me, open source is about making collaboration first and foremost in the development process. That is, instead of everyone doing their own thing, you work together towards your goal. That doesn't mean that everyone always works on everything, but it means that you make major decisions about the project together, you always have someone review your code before it gets merged, and you try as much as possible to include as many people as possible.


    What has recently attracted your attention in the world of web development?

    There are three things that interest me:
    1. WebAssembly . This project will make even more ambitious web applications possible than those that we already have.
    2. Ember's FastBoot Project. This is an easy way to take care of the problem of loading the first page for single-page applications.
    3. Glimmer 2 . This is a detail of the Ember implementation, but it reminds me of the advent of React: I think this is a big step forward in making heavy Javascript applications fast.

    There's three things I'm interested in:
    1. WebAssembly. This is going to pave the way for even more ambitious web applications than we had previously.
    2. Ember's FastBoot project. A drop-in way to take care of the initial page load issue for single page applications.
    3. Glimmer 2. This is an implementation detail of Ember, but it reminds me of when React hit the scene: I think it's a huge leap forward in the way that Javascript-heavy web applications can achieve speed.


    Favorite resources (blogs / sites / twitter) on the topics of web development and programming?

    I don’t follow one thing, I mainly read Hacker News and Reddit and articles from various other sources.

    I don't follow any one thing: I mostly read Hacker News and Reddit, and read the articles from everywhere.


    The last programming book you read that you liked?

    " Assembly Language step by step: programming with Linux". Now few people study assembler, but it seems to me that this book presents it in a very accessible way. The first chapters contain many interesting metaphors that really help to understand the concepts.

    " Assembly Language step by step: programming with Linux. "Not many people learn assembly these days, but I think this book presents it in a way that's very approachable. Its early chapters contain a lot of amusing metaphors that really help you grok the concepts.


    Are you tired of programming? What do you do when it happens?

    Sometimes! You may notice that a lot of what I'm doing now is related to texts: for me, pure programming in itself is not so interesting, it is interesting to combine programming with something else. Here's what I do: I switch to documentation or training others. It still has to do with programming, but not it.

    Sometimes! You'll notice that a lot of the stuff that I'm doing is also writing: to me, just programming itself isn't all that interesting, it's combining programming with something else. So that's what I do: I switch to documentation, or teaching. It's still _about_ programming, but it's not directly programming itself.


    What would you do if you had a couple of months of free paid time?

    I would try to finish rewriting the book about Rust, because this is the most important work that I do. I am fortunate that this is already part of my work :). Secondly, I would work on intermezzOS all day: I love to do this, but since this is not part of my job responsibilities, I never have enough time for it.

    I would try to finish re-writing the Rust book, as it's the most important work that I'm doing. I'm lucky enough that it's already a part of my job :). Second, I would work on intermezzOS all day: I really love it, but since it's not my job, I never have enough time.


    Who did you want to be in childhood?

    I really, really wanted to be an Egyptologist. Ancient Egyptian culture has always fascinated me. But then I found out about computers and found something

    I really, really wanted to be an Egyptologist. I've always found ancient Egyptian culture fascinating. But then I discovered computers, and found something I thought was even more interesting. :)




    Interesting? There’s nowhere to put off a ticket purchase, the last places are left! Registration here , ticket price - 9000 rubles.
    Conference organizer: Evrone

    Thanks to the best companies that support us:

    General partner: Toptal
    Gold partners: Rambler & Co , AT-Consulting and Progress
    Silver partner: JetBrains
    Bronze partners: Gitlab , VoltMobi , Restrim, InSales and Seendex.
    Beer partner supporting traditional afterparty - CloudCastle

    See you at RailsClub !

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