I’m glad to see conferences like this exist. It creates dedicated space for these focuses and the people who care passionately about them.
The actual Ruby for Good website has more information: https://rubyforgood.org/
Why does Ruby still have this artisinal aura to it, never seen C/C++ For Good gathering.
I volunteered a few years ago and had a great experience.
> an annual event happening this year in the Washington DC area where programmers from all over the globe get together over a long weekend to build and contribute to projects that help our communities
Or, just write code for a project - and add useful documentation to it. This is probably more relevant than overpriced hackathons.
The only programming language I know of that is obsessed with trumpeting its own moral virtue. "Matz is nice so we are nice," "Ruby for good," dragging DHH, etc.
Meanwhile the Ruby Central and whytheluckystiff debacles show it to be anything but.
Hackathons can be a blast. That said, it usually takes extra effort to productionize-a-thing after the initial hackathon effort.
Hope to see a follow-up post on what was built!