I drafted this post after RailsConf in 2018, and very belatedly realized I never published it. So I’m finally getting around to it 😉. Reviewing it now, 8 years later, I’m pleasantly surprised at how relevant most of the talks still are.

Below are my favorite talks that I attended at RailsConf 2018. Since there were multiple tracks, there were plenty of talks I didn’t have the opportunity to see. For highlights shared by others, check out RailsConf 2018 – Top 10 Favorite Talks (from Al Tenhundfeld), Our Favorite Ruby on Rails Talks from RailsConf 2018 (Planet Argon), and Five things I learned at RailsConf 2018 (Stephen Giles). There’s also a full playlist of the RailsConf 2018 talks if you might to see even more.

This was my first time in Pittsburg, so I took some time out to walk around and see some of the city, so there are more pictures below too.

• The Doctor Is In: Using checkups to find bugs in production: “Production checkups” are a way to test your code in production, and catch problems fast (he’s excited in his tweet because it was his first conference presentation).
  

  I did it! 📢 🎉 If you missed my #RailsConf talk and want to learn how checkups can help you find unusual bugs in production, check out my slides: https://t.co/rb6LaCCQee. Or just find me and talk to me! 😊

  — Ryan Laughlin (@rofreg) April 17, 2018

• Day 2 Keynote – The Future of Rails 6: Scalable by Default: Rails 6 will include parallelized test runs and multi-database support. The talk was a deep dive into how these are being implemented.
  

  Had an amazing time @railsconf! Thanks to the organizers for having me and everyone (sponsors, volunteers, RubyCentral) for making it happen. Here's a link to my slides https://t.co/WWYWtWOCfI #railsconf #rubyfriends

  — Eileen M. Uchitelle (@eileencodes) April 20, 2018

• The Code-Free Developer Interview: For me this was the most valuable talk at the conference. A more accurate title would be “Coding-Free” interviews (not “Code-Free”, as code is still part of it, but not live coding or take home projects).
  

  A big "thank you" to the folks who came for my talk on code-free developer interviews! If I didn't get a chance to talk to you after, please find me during the conference; I love talking about interviews!

  My slides for this talk are here: https://t.co/HGDe3u6bXd

  — Pete Holiday (@toomuchpete) April 18, 2018

• The Evolution of Rails Security: This talk is a good way to get some background on a variety of real-life security concerns, and how they were addressed. The speaker, Justin Collins, is the author of Brakeman.
  

  Slides for my #RailsConf 2018 talk "The Evolution of Rails Security" are available here: https://t.co/OxMHbZqjqJ Also linked from my site with all my other talks: https://t.co/nP16VrNRTc

  — Justin Collins (@presidentbeef) April 18, 2018

• Day 3 Keynote – Livable code: the scheduled speaker couldn’t make it, so Sarah Mei filled in. This was a slightly updated version of a talk she gave at EmberConf last year. It’s an excellent talk on the challenges of a team working together to keep a codebase livable, just like keeping a house livable with a lot of housemates can be challenging.
• Using Databases to pull your applications weight: databases have a lot of features that many developers don’t know about, which can improve your applications performance. This talk provides a good overview of indexes, materialized views, generating JSON, and more.
  

  You can find the presentation of my talk here #railsconf https://t.co/PyPPPP6LaU

  — Harisankar P S @railsconf (@coderhs) April 19, 2018

• Putting Rails in a corner: Understanding database isolation: there are different ways of executing transactions, and Postgres’ defaults may not always be what you want. This talk explains the different isolation levels that are available.
  

  Hurray! I did a talk.

  Slides here:https://t.co/hNgW2fMDru pic.twitter.com/F0NXf0oBLq

  — Emil Ong ❄️☃️🌨️ (@OngEmil) April 19, 2018

• Actionable Tactics for Leveling Up Junior Devs: good advice on mentoring (one might not agree with all of it, but it will get you thinking).
  

  Slides and overview document at https://t.co/VccMhb4jcL

  — Sumeet Jain (@sumeetjain) April 19, 2018