Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Mark Locklear This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Mark Locklear. Mark first got into programming when there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for him to continue to work in quality assurance and he decided he wanted a change of career, so he went to community college to learn programming. They talk about how he was first exposed to Rails, where he is working currently, and what was it about Rails that got him excited. They also touch on what made him want to move from quality assurance, how he mentors his students at the community college, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 316
• How did you first get into programming?
• Has only been programming for about 10 years
• Went into IT during the internet boom
• Used to work in IT quality assurance
• Went back to school for programming
• Java, PHP, and C++ classes
• Red Hat contracting in Raleigh
• How did you get into Rails?
• Taught himself Rails at his local library
• Currently working at Extension.org
• What is the cooperative extension service?
• What do you do at Extension.org?
• ask.extension.org
• What was it with Ruby and Rails that made you want to move from QA?
• Masters in Information Science
• You’re never too old to learn
• Get an idea for an app and try and make that
• Ruby is very intuitive, friendly, and the syntax is easy to understand
• Mentors students in Rails at the community college he went to
• Expose yourself to as many frameworks as you can
• It’s never too late to pursue a career in programming
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 316
• Red Hat
• Rails
• Extension.org
• ask.extension.org
• Ruby
• @marklocklear
• Mark’s Medium
• locklear.me
• Mark’s GitHub

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks
• Loot Crate

Picks: Charles