I went to RubyKaigi 2019 in Fukuoka. Starting this year, I discussed support for expenses from the company, and four people from the company were able to attend, one of them as a supporter helping with operations. I feel fortunate to be able to work as a programmer and to have opportunities to learn.

As you gain experience, you become able to do many things. At the same time, you also become unable to do many things. Like most young people, when I was in my teens I had both expectations and anxieties about the future. Fortunately, my expectations were stronger, so I did not worry too much. Now that I am in my mid-thirties, the future has become more realistic, and those feelings have changed into expectations and anxieties about my current abilities. There was a presentation that made me feel that.

The presentation that left the strongest impression on me at this conference was “Running Ruby On The Apple II.” It seems they did not quite make it to the point where Ruby actually ran, but the idea was to implement Ruby syntax in assembler. Live coding in machine language is worth seeing. The actual presentation screen was also projected using an Apple II. More precisely, it seemed to be an Apple IIc. The Apple II was announced in 1977, and the Apple IIc was announced in 1984 as a compact model in the same series. The specs were probably similar.

The presentation defined the concept of nRuby, a smaller set of Ruby elements, and then defined the syntax needed for it: object orientation, blocks, iterators, TDD, and so on. The main content was to show that each of these elements can be expressed in assembler, along with the code.

What impressed me about this presentation was that it used a machine and language implementation more than 30 years old to express something modern, even if only partially. That made it into a new kind of expression. Of course it is not practical, but since it was a Just For Fun attempt, that point is not very important. It also proved that the Apple II is a machine with value beyond practical use.

Thirty years is short compared with human history, but when you think about the speed of technological innovation and social change, it is very long. In other words, technology and programming are practical things, but after that amount of time, they can also become more than practical things. It may not have been intentional, but that is what the presentation made me feel.

In addition, technical ideas such as object orientation do not depend on technological progress itself. Excellent ideas become widely practical as technology evolves. But the ideas themselves can be implementable before that.

When my child suddenly called me and said, “If it is udon, you can eat it at home,” I wanted to go home quickly. Balancing things is difficult, but possible. I want to go again next year.

Finally, I will roughly summarize my schedule this time.

The share-cycle service Merchari was convenient for the short stay. I used it about 12 times. There were also quite a few times when no bicycles were available, but even accounting for that, it was a good experience.

4/18

• 4:30 Wake up
• 7:00 Depart Haneda. The flight had Wi-Fi, so I did some work.
• 9:00 Arrive in Fukuoka, take the subway to Gion, then Merchari from Gion.
• 10:00 ~ 18:00 Attend the conference. My basic style is to listen closely, so I listened.
• 19:00 ~ 21:00 After Party by shuttle bus, then disperse and check in.
• 21:00 ~ Walk around and check the gym location.

4/19

• 6:30 Wake up
• 7:00 Go to the gym by Merchari, and try collecting abandoned bicycles while I am at it.
• 8:00 Go toward Nagahama by Merchari, have breakfast at the market, then ride around and head to the conference.
• 10:00 ~ 18:30 Attend the conference. My basic style is to listen closely, so I listened.
• 19:30 ~ Take the shuttle bus and have ramen with the company members attending.
• 20:30 ~ 21:30 Walk and take the subway to visit the Fukuoka school, then disperse.
• 22:00 ~ 24:00 Go from an onsen to ramen by Merchari.

4/20

• 7:00 Wake up and check out
• 8:00 Subway to Tenjin, breakfast
• 9:00 Subway to Gion, then Merchari from Gion to the conference venue
• 10:00 ~ 19:00 Attend the conference. My basic style is to listen closely, so I listened.
• During the 12:00 lunch break, ride Merchari toward the port, eat sushi, and return.
• 20:00 Depart Fukuoka for Haneda