In a similar vein to the author's existing Rubyisms in Rails presentation and digital shortcut, this talk will peel back the skin and look at the inner workings of some of Rails' most popular features. In the process, developers new to Ruby will also gain a deeper understanding of how to think in Ruby and stop writing the Ruby-inflected PHP or Java they may currently be using.

The original Rubyisms talk has proven to be a popular link on Harris' blog and a decent seller in Addison-Wesley's Ruby shortcut series, mainly for the way it started at Ruby basics and progressed to a few complex cases. This talk will continue that destination-themed style but start from a more advanced beginning and branch out into more complicated parts of Rails' internals; you may understand how symbols and iterators work in Ruby, but you may not comprehend the metaprogramming complexity that underlies Rails' vaunted simplicity.

Topics like associations, routing, and migration may be discussed as well. However, if you are a developer new to Rails, be sure to come along for the ride.