"Your talk is about a subject that most feel like they understand but they usually don't, which is object oriented programming, can you explain what some of the requirements are to understand what you're going to talk about?"
Danilo: You probably have already heard or learned a little about Object-Orientation. That should be enough prior experience to understand my talk. Having worked with Rails might help understand some of the examples, but I won't assume you have in-depth knowledge on the subject. The topics I want to cover will be applicable to Ruby in general, as well as other OO languages you might have to work with.
"Many developers would love to become as experienced and fluent in Ruby as you are. What have been some of the pitfalls you had to overcome in order to become a great developer? Any good tips for a Ruby beginner?"
Danilo: I think one of the easy pitfalls in our industry is to be close-minded about which technology you work with. The software industry changes all the time, new languages, libraries, frameworks are created, evolve, get in and out of fashion. It's very easy to find a comfort zone and not worry about everything else, but you risk becoming obsolete or locked-in to an old technology if you're not constantly challenging yourself to learn new things.
"There are so many new technologies, best practices and so on being released all the time. In your personal opinion, and maybe related to your current field of work, what are some of the trends in technology that you think we should be paying attention for the near future?"
Danilo: Just like in fashion, technology evolves but also have cycles. I would say that instead of focusing only on the next new trend, there are lots to learn from studying the past. We like to learn the same lessons over and over again, and my talk will touch on a core skill that I think won't go away: software design. Investing in learning about software design is something that will pay off when you move to a new language, when you learn a new framework, and when you're building an application for your client. To me this is a core skill to invest in.