Rails Engines Are the Best-Kept Secret (And You're Using Them Wrong)
Giovanni Panasiti
Started coding and building websites as a kid, worked with blogger Robin Good at 14, moved to San Diego in 2015 for a robotics startup but returned to Italy. Now co-founded Consultala (HR SaaS) and runs MonteDelGallo (tech consultancy).
About
Rails engines are the most powerful architectural tool Rails gives you. After 5+ years building engines in production (including the 440+ star Active Storage Dashboard), I've learned that engines aren't just "gems with views." They're the missing piece between "monolith that's getting painful" and "let's rewrite everything as microservices." In this talk, I want to share the patterns that work, the mistakes that will ruin your week, and my zero-dependency philosophy that keeps engines maintainable for years. I'll also introduce ActiveCanvas a new open-source Rails engine that is a CMS/builder where marketing views can be dynamically changed by the marketing team without requiring too much html knowledge and without redeploy every time. Hot take: You don't need microservices. You don't need a team of ten. You need engines.
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