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This is a really nice talk, and I wish I had something like it that was language-agnostic (or Java). Though I found it comprehensible as a non-rubyist, I suspect some people might convince themselves that they can't follow it because of the rails jargon.

I've read a lot about the benefits of immutability, but most discussions don't go so far as to describe how to a) refactor existing systems, b) structure the interacting parts that a web app might need.

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Thanks, I'm really glad to hear a non-rubyist liked it. You put your finger on a really hard balancing act: the more Rails and Ruby specific it is, the more I can offer really practical steps for how to improve the Rails apps I spend all day in. But the more I talk about the general stuff, the more anyone can see that there's general principles at work that are useful in understanding and improving the design that are more useful than a list of gems to use.

I should say, I've written a few hundred lines of Ruby, am a language geek, and perhaps most importantly, have somehow ended up reading a lot of blog posts by people who write Ruby. I can't speak to how it would come across to someone who didn't have that superficial level of familiarity.

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