Description:

Everyone talks about writing web applications with Ruby, but it's great for applications of any kind. Shoes is a project that was started by _why the lucky stiff, and when he left, a plucky community of developers kept it alive.

If you've never worked with Shoes, it's the only Ruby GUI toolkit that is truly Ruby, and not just a binding to another project, like QT or tk. It uses Ruby-only features like blocks heavily, and works on all three platforms.

In this talk, Steve will do a small introduction to developing desktop apps with Shoes, talk about the challenges of maintaining a large polyglot project with an absent creator, and where Shoes is going in the future, as well as how you can get involved.