Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Kerri Miller This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Kerri Miller who is a developer who resides in Seattle! Chuck and Kerri talk about her background, how she got into programming, software, and much more. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:52 – Chuck: Hello! Our guest is Kerri Miller – say Hi! 1:00 – Guest: Hi! 1:06 – Chuck: Tell us who you are and where you work? 1:13 – Guest: I live in Seattle. 1:36 – Chuck: We had you on past episodes RR 191 and RR 261. Tell us about your work! 2:10 – Guest: I have been a remote-worker for about 5 years now.  2:30 – Chuck: Let’s focus on you and how you got into programming and what you’ve contributed into the community.  How did you get into programming? 2:45 – Guest: I had early access to computers. We also had the Thermal Printer! I went into theater and dance and then came back into programming. Kerri talks about sound boards that were using computers through her art world. 4:20 – Chuck: I love how people come from different backgrounds. 5:01 – Guest: Yeah you need to have other skillsets outside of being a computer programmer. What do you bring in and what do you have at the very beginning of your career and then you fill in those blanks as you go along. 5:33 – Chuck: Yep exactly. 5:47 – Guest: I am interested to see how my stage career helps my developer career! 7:35 – Chuck. 7:39 – Guest: Some people need walk-up music. 7:51 – Chuck: How did you get into Ruby? 8:00 – Guest: I was the only person that had heard about the Internet, so that’s how I got the job! I went to Barnes & Noble and read books; kids: that is an actual place! 9:24 – Chuck: You are still using Ruby right? 9:26 – Guest: Yes I am! I have explored GO and other languages, too, b/c that helps my skills with Ruby. 10:14 – Chuck: What made you switch? How do you decide to make that switch? 10:26 – Guest: This book really helped me: “Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby.” It invigorated my love for programming. 11:15 – Chuck: How long ago was that? 11:20 – Guest: About 7 years ago. 11:37 – Chuck: Some of the things you’ve done is conference organizing and speaking. Anything else? 11:50 – Guest answers the question. 13:17 – Chuck: What were your favorite talks to give and where? 13:30 – Guest: It really is hard to choose. I liked the one in Bath, UK last year: “Is Ruby Dead?” 15:00 – Chuck: Where do you see Ruby going? What’s the future like for Ruby? 15:10 – Guest: I think there are neat things that are happening in Ruby 3. 16:08 – Chuck: What other conferences are you involved with? 16:14 – Guest: Open Source & Feelings. (The guest goes into detail about what this conference has to offer!) 17:36 – Chuck: What should I be looking for there at CES (2019)? 17:52 – Guest answers. 18:39 – Guest: I have 6 Echos & Alexas in the house – do I need those many –...

Panel: Charles Max Wood   Guest: Olivier Lacan    This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Olivier Lacan who works for Pluralsight remotely while living in France.  Chuck and Olivier talk about his background, his education, and how he got into Ruby. Check it out!    In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job!   0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Can you update people where you are at now?   1:21 – Guest: I work on the Pluralsite remotely from France. (Check it out here!)   2:20 – Chuck: It feels like Pluralsite is offering new things for students. That’s nice!    2:30 – Guest: Yes, everyone has their own unique way to learn new things. Whether it’s through podcasts, reading, etc.    3:25 – Chuck.   3:32 – Guest.   4:01 – Chuck: RR 364 was the last episode that you’ve been on.    4:20 – The guest is talking about the changes that have occurred in only 7 months!   4:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about you! How did you get into programming?   5:12 – Guest: Frustration is how I got into programming.   The guest talks in-detail about how he got into programming. What frameworks and languages he’s learned along the way.    31:24 – Chuck: I want to call out the fact that you said: I’ve failed. That’s good for people to hear.    31:40 – Guest.    31:49 – Chuck: If I’m not failing then I’m not pushing myself. How did you get into Ruby?   32:04 – Guest: Andrew Smith is how I got into Ruby. We met through Twitter! I was looking for croissants b/c I was homesick. His handler is @fullsailor! Check him out on Twitter here!    34:56 – Chuck talks about variables.   35:00 – Guest talks about Ruby and how he got into it.    36:50 – The guest talks about starting up a business with his friend (Chris) called Clever Code.    39:38 – Chuck: How did you get into Code School?    39:40 – Guest talks about his time in Orlando, FL.    40:05 – Guest mentions Rails for Zombies.   47:15 – Chuck: Nice! It’s interesting to see how you’ve gotten into it!   47:25 – Guest: Check out Pluralsight.   50:08 – Chuck: Some of the background I was there but there is so much more!   50:20 – Guest: There are so many lessons that I’ve learned a lot the way. There is so much luck involved, too. There are so many parts of this that is jumping onto an opportunity.    51:09 – Chuck: You showed up, so it wasn’t fully all luck, though!   51:20 – Guest: Yes, I agree. Finding accountability partners. It’s like going to the gym. Yes, self-motivation is a thing.    52:17 – Chuck: How can people find you?   52:20 – Guest: Twitter,

Panel: https://twitter.com/cmaxw?ref_src=twsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor Guest: https://twitter.com/markbates?ref_src=twsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with https://github.com/markbates who is a consultant, trainer, entrepreneur, co-founder of PaperCall, and an author! Chuck and Mark talk about https://www.papercall.io/speakers/markbates GO, Ruby, JavaScript, and helping others within the community. Check out today’s episode to hear more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – http://getacoderjob.com/ 0:59 – Chuck: Hi! I saw we were on Episode 198! We talked about Ruby and different communities. 1:25 – Guest: Yes, we were talking about the conference we were trying to start, which never took-off! 1:50 – Chuck: You talked about how you are working with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language) now. You are an author, too! 2:06 – Guest: That came out in 2009. My 2nd son was born the day before that went to print. 2:42 – Chuck: How many kids do you have? 2:47 – Guest: I have 2 kids. 3:00 – Chuck: Happy Birthday buddy! Let’s talk about your journey into and out of Ruby! 3:15 – Guest: I will be happy to. 3:23 – Chuck: 3:27 – Guest: I have a degree in music and studied guitar in England. I came back in 1999 and needed a job. If you could spell HTML then it was good – then if you could work with it then it was even better! The guest mentions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool 4:20 – Guest: I got a job and transitioned into other things. Fell in-love with Java at the time – and then moved into straight development. I needed money, I had skills into it, and then I fell in-love with 5:10 – Chuck: What aspect in music are you into? 5:14 – Guest: I am a singer/songwriter, and yes into guitar. 5:57 – Chuck: Yeah, they used to have jam sections at conferences. 6:37 – Chuck: I find in interesting how much crossover there is between music and programming/coding. I hear them say: I found I needed to build a site for the band and whatnot. 7:25 – Guest: Yeah, I can do view source and I can figure out that I am missing a tag. That put me ahead in 1997 and 1998! I had done some work that. 8:57 – Chuck: You don’t even have to generate a https://www.javascript.com project with that – can I find the template and can I go? 9:14 – Guest: Yes programming has come a long way. 9:22 – Chuck: It is interesting, though. When we talk about those things – it was a different time but I don’t know if it was easier/harder for people to come into the career field now. 9:52 – Guest: Yes, I am into the educational side of it, too. There was a lack of books on the subject back-in-the-day. There is almost too much material now. Guest: I do a Google search that will give me something that is most recent. There is no reason to have to dig through material that isn’t relevant anymore. Guest: I used NOTEPAD to write websites. 11:29 – Chuck: Yes, and then Notepad plus, plus! 11:39 – Guest: Those days are gone. If you want to build a website you go to a company that does that now.  The guest refers to https://kubernetes.io https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ HTML, https://www.sequelpro.com and much...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael King This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Michael King who is a developer, an enthusiast for natural languages, developing, and mathematics. Charles and Michael talk about his background, and past/current projects that Michael is working on right now. Other topics of discussion include Ruby, Rails, Audacity, PHP, RubyMotion, and React Native. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Say “hi” Michael! Introduce yourself. 1:12 – Michael: I am a big language learner: Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. I learned through T.V. and music. I decided to build an app that helped with languages. I started doing it. 1:50 – Chuck: You hired a developer and had no idea what the developer what was doing. How do you make that transition? They just go with it – right? How did you decide: no, I have to understand THIS. 2:25 – Guest: It’s either I am really into it or I am NOT into it. I have been always very good with mathematics. The computer broke when I was in school and the only option we had were these...He was writing all these variables and I loved variables. The guest talks about Ruby, Rails, and Audacity! 4:08 – Chuck: You talk about natural languages – I see the correlation sometimes and sometimes I don’t. I learned French in school, and then I became fluent in Italian during my Mormon missionary trips. 4:56 – Guest: I am reading this book right now and you have to understand the technicians’ role in order to help lead him. The guest talks about the differences between coding, natural languages, and mathematics. 5:50 – Chuck: Did you let your developer go? Or did you keep him around? 6:03 – Guest: I let him go actually b/c he was on for a part-time basis. I started coding myself. I got help from friends and I got help from a lot of other people. I would ask them tons of questions and form a friendly relationship with them. From there, it snowed-ball from there! 6:57 – Guest: From that experience, I learned a lot. If I had to REDO what I did originally, then I would have done the following things differently... 7:44 – Chuck: I can identify with that – I was a freelancer for 8-9 years. I would build something and then they say: that’s not what we hired you to build. 8:10 – Guest: They wonder why they are getting this feedback? 8:22- Chuck: Why Ruby on Rails? 8:27 – Guest: I didn’t know the difference between mobile frameworks and web frameworks. 9:01 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t like the word “dumb” either. 9:09 – Guest: Ruby was very smooth and I liked it. I got addicted to the process through the Rails way and the Ruby syntax. 9:46 – Chuck: Same for me. I have done PHP before but when I got into Rails it naturally flowed into the way I wanted to work on stuff. I get it. 10:12 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 10:19 – Guest: This project that I have been working on now for 1.5 years. 11:41 – Chuck: You talked about how you picked up React Native. 11:52 – Guest: Yes, yes. 12:39 – Chuck: How did you settle on React Native? 12:50 – Guest talks about the Spanish and English languages. 13:25 – Chuck: I am curious – why didn’t you go with

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Paweł Dąbrowski This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Paweł Dąbrowski who is a coder and author who resides in Poland. He is a blogger and writes about the Ruby language, Ruby on Rails, and related technologies. To read more about Paweł, please visit his ABOUT ME via his blog. Today, Chuck and Paweł talk about Ruby, Paweł’s background, and much more! Check it out. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Get A Coder Job! 0:55 – Chuck: This week I am talking with Paweł Dąbrowski who was on episode 366. Give us a brief description of who you are, please. 1:25 – Guest: I run a company and I am here b/c of the article I wrote. It was a nice introduction to...programming. I write in my blog and have written a few gems. I created a course how to build Ruby Flow. Also, I create Ruby code every day. I think that’s it. 2:19 – Chuck: I am curious, how did you get into programming? 2:30 – Guest: It all started in school when he asked me to create a website using HTML code. I fell in-love with it. I didn’t want to give up and figured it all boils down to: “how bad do you want it?” 4:33 – Chuck: Yeah it was PHP for me, too. I could do dynamic things with this. I was a computer science major, and to build something REAL was amazing. 5:04 – Guest: Yes, when something works it’s amazing.  5:25 – Chuck: Yeah, when you realize you left out a semi-colon – oh no! In some ways, PHP was a friendly-way to do web development.  6:05 – Guest. 6:22 – Chuck: How old were you when you got paid for web development? 6:32 – Guest: I think I was sixteen years old and $50.00 was a fortune for me. I felt like a millionaire. It felt great to make money for something you love to do. It wasn’t work; I just enjoyed doing it. 7:07 – Chuck: That’s the magic! 7:14 – Guest: If you are doing something you love, then it’s great! 7:24 – Chuck: How did you go from PHP to one-page apps to Ruby? 7:35 – Guest: I didn’t like PHP at some point. I fell in-love with Ruby’s syntax. I was afraid that I wasn’t going to find a job. I wrote a programmer and told him that I have “no experience and no technical training...” I didn’t think it was possible, and he said that it was possible based on the work that I put in. I remember writing code in Ruby. 9:42 – Chuck: What drew you to Ruby? 9:48 – Guest: The community and the syntax. I love writing in Ruby, and I don’t know if I will switch my languages in the future. I want to create a more active Ruby community in Poland. I want to get junior developers involved. 10:29 – Chuck: Tell us about your blog! 10:40 – Guest: I started writing every day. I started in January and kept going for three months. I thought that was crazy, and so I wrote less frequently. I thought it was a game-changing decision for me b/c it took me to a new level. I wrote more, learned more, and it has given me visibility. 11:47 – Chuck: I have talked to people in various parts of the world. People say that it could be a barrier of only English-written blogs. 12:15 – Guest: I learned English once I got serious about coding/programming. I think it’s a disadvantage if you don’t...

Panel: https://twitter.com/cmaxw?ref_src=twsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor Guest: Jérémie Bonal This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with https://medium.com/@aquajvalin who works at https://ekylibre.com. He is a web developer and he has been using Ruby for the past few years now. They talk about Jérémie’s background, Ruby, Ekylibre, past/current projects, and so much more! Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – http://getacoderjob.com/ 1:05 – Chuck: We are talking with https://medium.com/@aquajvalin today. Tell us who you are! 1:21 – Guest: I am a web developer and I’ve been writing Ruby for about 2 ½ years now. I’ve been writing code now for 5 – 6 years. 1:54 – Chuck: I love writing in Ruby, too. Let’s get into your story. What’s the Ruby community like in France? 2:23 – Guest: It’s pretty dispersed in the town that I am living in right now (Bordeaux). We meet up through Meetups and chatting about everything and drinking beer. There are more Ruby communities in Paris. 3:23 – Chuck: Maybe one day I will make it out to Bordeaux. My grandmother was French and I thought it would be cool to see the different parts of France. 3:45 – Guest: Cycle through France. 3:53 – Chuck: My grandmother grew-up near Lyon. 4:02 – Guest: France is pretty small compared to the U.S. You can fit several towns in a single trip. 4:21 – Chuck: I do have a funny connection. When I lived in Italy for a few years I would show them a map of Utah and they thought CA was close to UT. 5:03 – Guest: Yes, it’s hard to conceptualize. From what I’ve heard it could be a road trip for Americans. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that. 5:40 – Chuck talks about Disneyland and family topics. Chuck: Let’s talk about you and your Ruby story. Are you hiring and where can they go? 6:20 – Guest: Yes we are! You can find us on our https://ekylibre.com 6:57 – Chuck: Let’s talk about you – how did you get into programming? 7:00 – Guest: When I was young with calculators. My friends made games with it and it blew my mind. I tried to make sense of what the key words meant. Nothing worked and I got real puzzled. I went to college and in the first semester you didn’t choose a major – you just do a bit of everything. You learn some engineering, chemistry, math, etc. so people could find what they really wanted to do. I worked in Python and worked with graphs and all of those concepts. This is when I got into it. I planned on going into chemistry, but all my friends were getting into programming. They kept saying: keep doing programming. I caved-in and the rest is history. 9:02 – Chuck: What languages have you worked with? 9:09 – Guest lists the different languages. Guest started with Python 2. 9:30 – Chuck: We started with Java and C++. It’s interesting to compare the differences there. As we are talking about this – a lot of people think they NEED a computer science degree and others say: nah! I am curious what advantages did it give you? 10:12 – Guest: I was disillusioned about the whole thing. They taught me a lot but I didn’t know anything valuable. I learned Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I started building web apps and I got joy out of it. I thought I didn’t have any purpose with my new degree. I noticed in the conversations with my colleagues (who don’t have computer science background) I saw that I could solve patterns and I had a better vocabulary. I saw that I could apply it and that felt good. 12:37 – Chuck: Interesting. I found my degree helped with the low-level stuff and helped me to solve problems. I learned on the job, though,...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Daniel P. Clark This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Daniel Clark who is a Ruby and Rust enthusiast, blogger, and freelancer. Daniel and Chuck talk about Daniel’s background, and his past/current projects. Check out today’s episode! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0.00 – Advertisement – GET A CODER JOB! 0:58 – Guest: Hi! 1:01 – Chuck: Introduce yourself real quick, please, and what are you known for? 1:08 – Guest: My blog posts – I write about about Ruby. I have a few projects that are well known: Faster Path among others.  1:35 – Chuck: We had you on a past episode, 368 Ruby Rogues. Where do you write? 1:49 – Guest: I am a contractor and I write blog posts for them. 1:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about you! How did you get into programming? 2:07 – Guest: My dad is a programmer and before 5th grade I got a computer and no Internet. I tried things to see how things worked. I wrote from the top down – recipe style. I really enjoyed programming back then. Later in life, Java was the next big thing and for me to get into it was harder. I got a book and figured out how to compile it. I stopped programming when I wrote HELLO WORLD! I came across Python at some time. At the same style I wrote my Q basic programs, things were more functional. That’s my entry into programming. 4:05 – Chuck: What got you into Python? 4:13 – Guest: The syntax in Java hurt in writing. With Python when I first started out it felt like it wasn’t asking me more than what I needed to do. It was very simple for me. 4:38 – Chuck: What did you build with Python? 4:43 – Guest: Connect 4 in Python and command line tools. Simple things. I wrote one time a sales website in Django with Python and use with Google Pay. I wrote it and it got to launch point and then I was done. 5:30 – Chuck: How Did you get into Ruby? 5:35 – Guest: A childhood friend who loved Pearl and at the time I loved Python. We would friendly argue about which one was better. He talked to companies for me, and he edified my abilities in their eyes. I’ve been with Ruby since and I have a passion with it. 7:02 – Chuck: Why Ruby? 7:06 – Guest: With Python I never learned object oriented design and I never got into a community with Python. I didn’t connect with a broader community. I was constantly learning new things with Ruby. I connected a lot with people and shared with them the things that I’ve learned. 8:11 – Chuck: What have you done in Ruby? 8:15 – Guest: Almost you name it – I haven’t done graphics with gaming. I have done tons with the web side of things. I’ve done command line game and flashcards for learning language characters. That specific project was one of my favorite projects. I designed an entire... 9:14 – Chuck: Model view graphics for command line - how does that work? 9:23 – Guest: Rails has model view controller I followed that same schema. 10:00 – Chuck: Is it open source somewhere? 10:05 – Guest: Yes. Language Cards through GitHub. There are 2 languages that you can start learning with. 10:28 – Chuck: Performance on Ruby – how did you get into that angle? 10:51 – Guest: I agreed to work with shares in a startup company and I worked a year on it. It was heavy on features. One thing I noticed was that the load time for the front page was unacceptable (loading time). I wanted to figure out where the bottlenecks were. I wrote my first bit of code and linked it up with Ruby and I got my website to run 30% faster. Seeing that – that was exciting....

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nassredean Nasseri This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Dean who is a senior software engineer at VTS, Inc. in New York City. Dean uses Ruby and is an advocate for the software. He and Chuck discuss his background, current projects, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:00 – Dean: Hi, Everyone! 2:07 – Chuck: E363 of Ruby Rogues is your past episode. 1:13 – Dean: I am a Ruby developer and out in NY City. I have been developing Ruby for the past 6 years now. 1:42 – Chuck: What made you want to do something like Fir? 1:50 – Dean: I love developing developer tools and using something that I can use in my day-to-day work – I like that. I am constantly debugging and trying new things. That’s how I operate. I wanted to build a tool that would take the concepts that were missing from IRB and...put in a shell like FITCH. That was the motivation to that project. 2:42 – Chuck: Check out his past episode to get into the nitty gritty. Let’s roll back – how did you get into programming? 3:10 – Dean: I started programming in 2009/2010. I was a senior in High School and I wanted to make a social media website. I knew about HTML and other things but databases and servers I had no idea about. I downloaded WAMP – you familiar? It stands for: WINDOWS APACHE, MYSQL, and PHP. 4:19 – Chuck: What about programming that got you started? 4:27 – Dean: To build the thing that was in my head. My motivation was I wanted to see this THING to get built. I had a UI and I used jQuery. I got further and further; I realized that I was enjoying it. I liked the feeling and I spent 6 hours and I felt rewarded. 5:12 – Chuck: I played with programming as a younger person but in college I was introduced to...and I liked something coming together. Programming felt like a toy for me. I built a platform for people to find an apartment with their amenities that they wanted. It never came to light but it was fun to build. 6:00 – Dean. 6:12 – Chuck: I was a software consultant for a while. They spent 10’s of thousands of dollars on this project and me. You get into PHP and how did you come to Ruby? 6:40 – Dean: I didn’t study computer science in college. My friends who had a “background” and they said that I needed to use Python. Python held me back b/c of the 2 to 3 split and the server getting up on my machine b/c certain tendencies needed x, y, and z. That drove me away from Python but I did like the language. My friend told me to try Ruby and I read a book (Ruby on Rails by Michael, 2nd ed.) and I got Ruby. That was really cool to me. I went through the tutorial and that was powerful for me. Motto: Keep things fun and simple and then build on things later. 8:59 – Chuck: I hear people complain about Ruby. Can you still do that? 9:13 – Dean: Yes, I think so. The thing that stands out to me is action cable. Maybe a beginner doesn’t want to have to think about. Rails is the best way to get up and running with minimum friction. 9:45 – Chuck: I worked through a company and I was their tech support – so I can relate to that. Other things that people worry about: Action Cable, etc. you don’t have to worry about that until later. That makes sense. What have you done that your proud of? 10:24 – Dean: I worked at a company and proud of the certain features I have built and shipped. I am proud of learning more and more about Ruby internals. I am proud of FIR, too. 11:43 – Chuck: Yeah, FIR does sound interesting. I hear people say that often: I built this thing and it makes a difference in this way. What are you...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nell Shamrell-Harrington This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Nell who is a principle engineer at Chef. Check them out at Chef.Io. She also works with Operation Code. This organization helps veterans to learn code, and helps them get a technical job. Check out today’s episode where Chuck and Nell discuss Ruby, Rust, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 2:00 – Chuck: Episode 105 is another episode you’ve been on before. 2:25 – Chuck: I want to spotlight you and talk about what you are working on. How did you get into programming? 2:38 – Nell: I was a theater major in college. I graduated in 2007 and the big financial crisis hit in 2008. I found work at the Physics Department in Seattle. Once they found out that I knew how to code, they gave me more coding to do. When you are doing just the mathematics portion – you don’t see how this applies to real life. I didn’t pursue it because I didn’t see how it worked in the real world. Then I saw eventually how my theater background really helped me with coding because you have to be super creative. After that (this is when I got into Ruby) my roommate in college sent me a message. She was working with Ruby, too, and she wanted to bring me on as a junior developer. 5:55 – Chuck: It’s interesting, too, to see what you just said. Not seeing the real-world application with some of that stuff. I can relate to that. I wanted to get into IT after college. The other thing is that it was someone you KNEW to get you into Ruby. People get into a specific framework because of someone that they knew/know. 6:54 – Nell: Yes, it’s the personal testimonies that help people make those decisions. 7:13 – Chuck: It was someone that you KNEW that helped you get X job. 7:24 – Nell: Yes, in Operation Code, too. Take a look at this candidate (normally you wouldn’t look at them b/c of their CV) and take a chance on them. 8:09 – Chuck: One thing that I am curious about what’s been your favorite thing to work on with Ruby? 8:38 – Nell: I worked on the supermarket product. Cookbook is a chef recipe for infrastructure... We weren’t just running a site that people were using. They were saying: we love it, but we are behind a firewall. They couldn’t use the public one and they wanted a private one. The answer was: Yes! That was the first time I worked on software – packaged and distributed. I loved the breadth of the industries that it had an affect on. It was cool to see different industries use my work through a Ruby on Rails application. Ruby does scale! 10:42 – Chuck: Let’s talk about your work at Chef. You worked on Supermarket and then what was the distributed part to it? 11:05 – Nell: Chef Omnibus was the tool we used. You could take that package and install it on the infrastructure... 11:33 – Chuck: I worked at a university for a while. The work I did was that the access to the Internet was limited. Chef would have been nice! 11:58 – Chuck: What did you do at Blue Box? 11:59 – Nell: Software engineer there and we were a hosting company. We had a Rails application... I helped write the code. 12:29 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 12:32 – Nell: I am working on a project called Habitat. Nell talks about what THIS project is and how it functions. Check it out! 14:20 – Chuck: How did you get into Operation Code? 14:26 – Nell: Both my parents were air force operators. I wanted to but I had a physical limitation so I couldn’t. I grew up in military culture from 0-14 years old. After that I realized in...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nathan Kontny This week on My Ruby Story, the panel talks with Nathan Kontny who has been in the Ruby community since 2005. He once was a chemical engineer, and then got into programming after a broken ankle incident; after that...the rest is history! Today, Nathan and Chuck talk about Ruby, how to begin a startup company, Rockstar Coders, balancing life, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:05 – Chuck: E365 is the past episode you’ve been featured on. 1:14 – Nathan comments. 1:20 – Chuck. 1:56 – Nathan: Been in the community since 2005. I am a developer and entrepreneur. I do a lot of YouTube and videos nowadays. 2:50 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 2:55 – Guest: It’s weird. I was a chemical engineer in the past. Back in the day 1996 I was learning... My love for it started through an internship. It was kind of a scary place dealing with harmful materials. Make sure you aren’t carrying uranium with you, and wear multiple gas masks at all times. There was an acid leak through someone’s shoulder. I didn’t love it, but something fortunate happened. I broke my ankle in one summer, and when I showed-up they made me go to this trail where I couldn’t be near the chemicals. Well, the director had computer problems and asked him to help with him. I put in code and out came results. In the chemical industry it was/is: “Maybe the chemicals will react to this chemical in this way...?” It was this dopamine rush for me. After that summer, I wanted to do programming. 7:16 – Chuck: Same thing for me. This will manifest and then boom. I had a friend change to computer major – and this led me to the field. 8:45 – Guest: Yeah, I had a different career shown to me and then I had a choice. 9:02 – Chuck: How did you find Ruby? 9:05 – Guest: I got a job but they wouldn’t let me program because I didn’t have enough experience. I had to teach myself. I taught myself Java – 9 CDs back in the day. I stayed up late, and did anything I could to teach myself. I taught myself Java. I got promoted in the business and became a Java developer. After 5 years of that I started doing freelance work. I love Ruby’s language and how simple it was to me. I have flirted with other languages, but I keep coming back to Ruby. 13:00 – Chuck: The same for me, too. Oh, and this makes this so much easier, and it extends so much easier. I have questions about being an entrepreneur. Anyways, you get into Ruby and Rails, you’ve done a bunch of things. What are you proud of and/or interested in with Rails? How do you feel like Rails helps with building things? 14:00 – Guest shares his past projects.  I was proud of just hosting Rails, because there were so many changes back in the day. I have helped with open source contributions back in 2009. There was a security problem and I discovered this. Nothing happened and I just went in and fixed the bug; an infamous contribution. I am proud of my performance work. I made a plug-in for that,...