Alan Ridlehoover
Sr. Engineering Manager @ Cisco
San Francisco, California, United States
Actions
Empathetic leader (@ Cisco).
Passionate Rubyist.
Fallible human.
Storyteller. International speaker.
Environmentalist. Feminist. Ally.
Swell photographer. Rusty drummer.
Loving twins dad and husband.
Owner of too many hats, given I only have the one head.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Derailing Our Application: How and Why We Are Decoupling Our Code from Rails
Cisco is probably the largest Rails shop you’ve never heard of. Our 4 million line Ruby codebase has been under continuous development since 2007. As with any large codebase, ours is not without challenges. In “Derailing Our Application,” we share how our architecture has evolved to decouple 800,000 lines of Ruby code from Rails constructs in order to enable us to scale our team to 1,000 engineers and beyond without losing the benefits of Rails. Join us on the track less traveled! All aboard!
Indispensable: What Human Computers Can Teach Human Programmers
No one told them what to expect, but the machine was coming.
Dozens were laid off in NASA's transition from human to digital computing.
Because the machine could calculate, generalists were expendable. But it could not formulate. So, those who embraced the change (learned to program), knew the domain (orbital mechanics), and could verify the results became indispensable.
Now it's our turn as Rubyists: to embrace change, to leverage our expertise, and to verify the results. That's how we become indispensable.
A Brewer's Guide to Filtering out Complexity and Churn
Mechanical coffee machines are amazing! You drop in a coin, listen for the clink, make a selection, and the machine springs to life, hissing, clicking, and whirring. Then the complex mechanical ballet ends, splashing that glorious, aromatic liquid into the cup. Ah! C’est magnifique! There’s just one problem. Our customers also want soup! And, our machine is not extensible. So, we have a choice: we can add to the complexity of our machine by jamming in a new dispenser with each new request; or, we can pause to make our machine more extensible before development slows to a halt.
The Secret Ingredient: How To Understand and Resolve Just About Any Flaky Test
Flaky tests are an inscrutable bane. Hard to understand. Annoying. And, so frustrating! My personal nemesis is Daylight Saving Time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tripped over it. Let’s just say I was well into the “shame on me” part of that relationship, until I discovered the secret ingredient that nearly all flaky tests have in common. Turns out they only seem inscrutable. It really is possible to understand and resolve just about any flaky test.
San Francisco Ruby Conference 2025
Derailing Our Application: How and Why We Are Decoupling Our Code from Rails
https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/derailing-our-application-how-and-why-we-are-decoupling-our-code-from-rails-san-francisco-ruby-conference-2025
Rocky Mountain Ruby 2025
The Other Side of Fear (Lightning Talk)
https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/lightning-talk-the-other-side-of-fear-rocky-mountain-ruby-2025
RailsConf 2025 Sessionize Event
RailsConf 2025
The Other Side of Fear (Lightning Talk)
https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/lightning-talk-the-other-side-of-fear
RailsConf 2025
Derailing Our Application: How and Why We Are Decoupling Our Code from Rails
https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/derailing-our-application-how-and-why-we-are-decoupling-our-code-from-rails
Sin City Ruby 2025
A Brewer's Guide to Filtering Out Complexity and Churn
Rocky Mountain Ruby Sessionize Event
RailsConf 2024
A Gardener's Reward (lightning talk)
https://youtu.be/8QgQsQoODz0?si=7ZiBOK5lcD_iIQ_F
Tropical.rb 2024
A Brewer's Guide to Filtering Out Complexity and Churn
https://youtu.be/ysTtQgQQSUA?si=3BVRZgIt8xbDnKA2
RubyConf 2023 Sessionize Event
RailsConf 2023 Sessionize Event
RubyConf Mini (2022)
A Brewer's Guide to Filtering Out Complexity and Churn
https://youtu.be/RJRSosxtzbU?si=EuftxHKAocIpm6yG
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