"Your talk is about cryptography done right in Ruby, this is a very compelling subject that all programmers should understand specially considering the recent discussions around privavy and information security, can you explain what some of the requirements are to understand what you're going to talk about?"
Bruno: Cryptography can be a tough topic, specially for newcomers. Try doing it blindly without background knowledge and you can easily get into serious trouble, or even get fired. Please don't expect deep complex math or anything like that, since I don't consider myself a crypto analyst and this isn't the presentation goal. As long as you're interested in learning few tricks you'll be fine.
My main goal at RubyConf Brazil is to discuss cryptography for mere mortals, non-experts, developers like you and me. As a consequence, I'll be covering basic concepts, common mistakes, how complex the existing APIs are (with good reason) and how Krypt can potentially narrow the gap between simple and safe. I'll also be covering controversial topics like privacy on the internet in general.
"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?"
Bruno: I've started my career as a sysadmin a long time ago, I was paranoid about infrastructure security, firewalls, DMZs and honeypots, and before I even realized I was programming to solve my day-to-day issues. The early days were hard ones, and involved a lot of reading; the nice thing is that all my early security experience came to be very useful nowadays. Take this advice: the best thing you can do is to learn from your previous experiences, whether they are bad or good.
It doesn't matter whether you're a Ruby, Rails, Java, Python programmers, the most important thing is having no fear of learning, change, or leaving your comfort zone. If you are working at a dead-end job where you stopped learning new stuff a long time ago, just quit. Quoting Johnny Cash "Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money" - it's more common than you think to give up a good salary to have the opportunity to learn and improve your skills.
Another tip is: while reading a hundred of books is important, never downplay contributing to open source projects. There's a lot of experienced programmers out there, sharing their code at GitHub, how about getting together and hacking some code? I think the best way to learn is having your code torn into pieces by others; it doesn't matter if your code is good or bad, being a good developer is about overcoming the fear of making mistakes and learning from them instead; as a bonus you'll improve your english skills.
"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?"
Bruno: We have been living in a critical moment with the recent privacy scandals, security became a hot topic and suddenly every application or framework now has "military-grade security". Don't buy into the hype! Instead, try to understand the basics of cryptography, keep up with CVEs and NIST. Another good place to go a little deeper on the topic is to take a look on some security libraries like libsodium and Blake2.