Ruby Talks: Kasper Timm Hansen on Why You Should Learn to Read Rails Source Code & RailsConf 2025

Ruby Central’s Rhiannon Payne sits down with Kasper Timm Hansen, an independent Rails consultant and former Rails Core team member, to talk about his upcoming RailsConf 2025 talk, his open source journey, and why reading source code might be the most underrated skill for Rails developers today. Kasper shares lessons from years of deep source diving, how he joined the Rails Core team, and the practice that can help developers go from guessing how code works to truly understanding it. Kasper's RailsConf 2025 talk: "Yes, You Can Work on Rails & any other Gem" Description: Have you ever wanted to dig into the Rails source, but it just seems too daunting? Good news! In this session, we'll look at practical tools to level you up, so you can make it happen. Even better, these navigation tools work for any gem & your day-to-day codebase too. We'll use live demos to engage with real code from gems & Rails. We'll improve our ability to sight-read code & identify patterns within swiftly. You'll see how to refine your learning process so it yields compounding results to make you a better developer & teammate. RailsConf 2025 will take place from July 8 to 10 in Philadelphia, PA. Buy your ticket to the FINAL RailsConf: https://railsconf.org