Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Victor Shepelev This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks with Victor Shepelev who is a Ruby programmer and also a poet. He works for Verbit.ai and lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Chuck and Victor talk about his background, how Victor got into Ruby, and his latest projects. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:13 – Chuck: Episode 367 – check it out! 1:37 – Background? 1:42 – Living in Ukraine. 2:08 – Chuck: How did you get into programming? 2:18 – Victor: I broke my leg and very bored. In ‘85-‘86 and I was gaming. Since then I got into programming and have been in it for 20 years. 3:20 – Chuck: Prince of Persia. 3:26 – Chuck: What made you stick with programming? 3:34 – Victor: I think it was magically and exotic. It still fascinates me. 4:03 – Chuck: How did you get into Ruby? 4:15 – Victor: There are great several programming attitudes – but I belong to the one that just write texts that expose the meanings. I like the text. I am a poet. When I write in Ruby (not like poetry), I write texts and that is what I’m thinking about. I loved C-Plus, Plus in the early 2000’s. For me it wasn’t fully expressive enough. I tried other things and searched other options. I met Ruby and it was love at the first sight. 7:09 – Chuck: What have you done with Ruby that you are proud of? 7:18 – Victor: The project takes my time is data integrated into itself: countries, planets, famous paintings, and so on. It’s really cool. 9:49 – Chuck: Where can you find this project? 9:54: Victor – GitHub and some conferences. 10:27 – Chuck: You mentioned being in a company that does translation? 10:33 – Victor: Yes. It is written in Python. 11:11 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 11:18 – Victor: Yes, this project and last year I got into development of Ruby itself. I wasn’t that proficient. I am not contributing to the language itself but creating documentation (program language reference) and new features of Ruby. 12:40 – Chuck: What is the Ruby community like in Ukraine? 12:46 – Victor: It is pretty large. Don’t know if it is large to U.S. standards. Meetups happens every once to twice a month in my city. Recent years it has gotten smaller, because I don’t know if they are going to the new “hip” technology. 14:16 – Chuck: We’d have Meetups like 30-40-50 people and now it’s only 10-20. Different companies are moving to different things that they need. 14:43 – Victor: In Ukraine I think a lot of people are doing a lot of opensource. I think it will still grow to some extent. 15:29 – Chuck: It’s not that Ruby is dying per se. Ruby hit a stride when web was hot. Now we are seeing growth in AI or IOT. For example people are reaching to Python for the mathematics and scientific side to it. 16:17 – Victor adds in his comments. Victor: I had some high hopes for Rails. 18:14 – Chuck comments. Chuck: It would be interesting to see bindings. See these other options come forward. 18:39 – Victor. 19:10 – Chuck: Picks! 19:14 – Advertisement. Links:

• Ruby

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Dr. Neil Brown This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks with Dr. Neil Brown who is a researcher. He helps people teach “how to program” more effectively and efficiently. Check out his social media pages and his research via the web. Chuck and Neil talk about his research among other topics. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:52 – Chuck: We are talking with Neil Brown. 1:05 – Chuck: I’ve always wanted to go to London! Let’s dive in and talk about you and how you got into all of this stuff. 1:40 – Neil: I was in primary/elementary school and sometime there I went to my dad and I asked him how are these games made? He gave me a book. 3:12 – Chuck: What are some things that you are researching? 3:24 – Neil answers the question. 5:24 – Chuck: How do you know what to look into and how do you test your hypotheses? There is some science there. 5:45 – Neil: We have a large data collection. 6:07 – Chuck: You have your own ideas linked to Java? 6:15 – Neil: Yep. 6:20 – Chuck: Do people know that they are test subjects? 6:31 – Neil: Oh yeah. 6:39 – Chuck comments. 6:45 – Chuck: What do programmers see? 6:55 – Neil: It is interesting to see the code that they are writing. You are not sure what they are trying to do. Programming is a very frustrating experience for most people. I want to reach back in time and tell them that the problem is there. You watch people do it and they kind of in the right area, and then they go somewhere else. It’s frustrating for beginners. 8:06 – Chuck: How long have you been doing the research? 8:05 – Neil: Five Years. 8:22 – Chuck: How would I get into something like that? 8:32 – Neil answers the question. 9:35 – Chuck: What are you most proud of? 9:42 – Neil answers the question. 11:34 – How do you communicate that to people in the “real world” in a professional setting? 11:45 – Neil answers the question. Neil: Be careful of your own expectations. 12:32 – Chuck: What are you doing now? 12:35 – Neil answers the question. 12:58 – Neil: Research is focused on the “new.” Making something “new.” We are doing essential work, but work that doesn’t get a lot of recognition. 13:37 – Chuck: That’s interesting. What else should we dive into? I would love to have you back. 13:57 – Chuck: Any advice for someone who wants to get into this area? 14:00 – Neil: Study and get a Ph.D. to help you with research. 14:40 – Chuck: There are a lot of universities who do this type of research? 14:52 – Neil answers the question. 15:35 – Picks! 15:41 – Advertisement Links:

• Ruby
• Elixir
• Dr. Neil Brown – Podcast
• Dr. Neil Brown – Article
• Dr. Neil Brown – Twitter
• Tips for Teaching Programming with Dr. Neil Brown
• BlueJ

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Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Erik Dietrich This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Erik Dietrich who is a consultant and a business owner. After he left the IT life, he is a partner for a content marketing company among others. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:52 – Greetings! It’s another story on Ruby Stories. 1:04 – We have had you on Episode 296. 1:28 – Guest: I did in my blogger days, but over the course of time but I ran into management roles and then left. That definitely skewed my topics that I talked about. 1:59 – Chuck: Introduce yourself for people.  2:53 – Chuck: Let’s talk about your career or even further back. How did you get into programming? 3:24 – Guest: My father introduced me into my project. Into my educational background I do remember banging away at my computer because there weren’t any courses offered (at the time). 4:13 – Chuck: Let’s talk about computer science. 4:22 – guest: I had to apply to the computer science program to the college I went to. I knew I wanted to do something cutting-edge. 4:42 – Chuck: After college where did you end up? 4:55 – Guest: I graduated in 2001 from college. I did some odd jobs. Thankfully, the economy was stronger for me to be a software engineer title. Then from there... 5:57 – Chuck: When I graduated I started off with Tech Support then Q/A. 6:12 – Chuck: It sounds like you worked all over the place? Is it deliberate when you chance course within your career? 6:36 – Guest: Actually, it was full circle for me. At some point, I did get more career-minded. 8:01 – Chuck: How did you end up there – the programming job? 8:13 – Guest: My mom left, but worked at X company. The co. knew that she had a son that finished a computer science degree. 9:10 – Chuck: The recruiters should be use to that at some point. 9:23 – Guest added some more thoughts. 9:50 – Chuck: Talk about the progression you’ve made. I know Ruby is not your primary focus of your background. Take people on a tour. I’m curious if we can talk about how you got into the consulting and marketing roles that you fill these days. 10:28 – Guest: Whistle stop of my career, here we go. The first 10 years, it was pretty standard. Across a few different companies went from one position to another up to the architectural role. Then, I went through job-hopping. I ended up doing independent consulting and freelance works. I didn’t know really, though, what I wanted to do. Coaching people is what I did for a while. There I discovered something – I enjoyed that coaching work. More opportunities that I had, and then I realized it was a good fit. Over the course of time, I had the blog, which was reflecting anything I was doing. If I am writing about x, y, z, I was blogging about it. 14:28 – Chuck: How do you know which opportunity to pursue? 14:38 – Guest: General, I was say... 15:52 – Chuck: What are you most proud of? 16:04 – Guest: The blog. 17:28 – Guest: My book. Check it out. Amazon and Leanpub. 17:47 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 17:58 – Guest answers this question. 21:12 – Chuck: Any other thing you’d like to talk about? 21:27 – Guest...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Jamie Wright This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Jamie Wright about his background and current projects that he is working on. Ruby Rogue interviewed Jamie on Episode 326 – check out that episode for more information. Chuck and Jamie discuss many topics, but one in particular is truly inspiring and that is Jamie’s impact within his community: teaching! Jamie is enthused to help students with designing games and helping them with programming. Check-out today’s episode to hear more!  In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:53 – Introduction. Episode 326 of Ruby Rogues is a past episode with Jamie as a guest. 1:50 – Chuck was at Microsoft Build. It’s interesting to see where all of this stuff comes out. Interesting to see where it will be in the next few years. 2:31 – There is a lot of room for improvement – Google Dispatch. It is their AI, which is insane. Compare that to last year, it’s leap and bounds different. 2:59 – Let’s talk about your story, Jamie. 3:10 – Jamie started programming in high school, which was offered through an introduction course. It was in Basic. His cousin who was a programmer, too, influenced him. Jamie took this course, and he made a tic-tac-toe game. Went he went to college he took computer science, and fell in love with it there. Jamie loves the idea of creating things from nothing to something. It is art to me. It’s pretty neat. It’s not like you are investing hundreds of thousands into a fashion line, it’s just your time into a computer. 4:48 – Chuck makes some comments. 4:57 – Jamie mentors children from 7 – 17 years old. Works with a program, which is worldwide. Jamie helps the kids build their own games. 5:29 – Chuck: That sounds like fun! 5:35 – Seeing a side of programming where there aren’t any deadlines. 5:45 – Chuck reflects on Jamie’s previous comment. 6:03 – Jamie: It’s fun to put all of that stuff aside and watch people tinker. And hearing all of the “Oh’s and Ah’s!” 6:22 – Chuck: How did you get into Ruby? 6:31 – Jamie: Code Mash (local). Leon, in 2006/2007, was doing a workshop for Ruby, and Jamie fell in love with it. He tinkered around with it in Rails, and he was hooked ever since. 7:25 – What got you excited about it? 7:36 – A.) You had to be on Windows B.) You needed Microsoft Tooling. Just the ease of opening up a terminal, and that there was less friction – it was just easy! Jamie continues to talk about the other reasons why he fell in love with Ruby. He also enjoys the community. For him it was a good decision and it is fun for me. The fun factor is still there for me. Jamie loves Ruby. 9:22 – Chuck: What have you done in Ruby? We talked about

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Miller This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Rob Miller. Rob is a return guess from Ruby Rogues 235. Rob shares his journey into programming, starting with creating HTML and CSS and website building. Rob talks about his book Text Processing with Ruby and projects and he is currently working on. In particular, we dive pretty deep on 1:15 - Rob shares about getting into programming starting with Geocities and website building 4:00 -  Rob and Charles talks about the old ways of working with websites building 5:20 -  Rob talks about when he go into Ruby, and along with PHP and Rails. 6:09 -  Rod share on what he like most about Ruby. The Community and people who were ambassadors for the language. Charles share that this is similar to his experience with getting into Ruby. The community is amazing and very helpful. 8:00 -  Charles ask Rob about his book about “Text Processing with Ruby.” Rob shares his reason for writing this book about text wrangling. 11:00 -  Rob share more on Dev Ops and other connecting tools to Ruby. 12:00 -  Charles ask about other thing Rob is doing with Ruby. Rob says it is mostly web development materials and things that have to with web. 13:00 -  Rob mentions that nowadays he is working on marketing, data and working with companies with their products on the backend of marketing and programming. 15:00 -  Rob says this is a way for him to help him promote his book. Rob shares a bit on The 3 Virtues of a Programmer: Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. 16:00 - Charles ask Rob about writing a book. Charles asks about the process with Pragmatic Book Shelf. Rob shares the dos and don’ts of his experience with his book. 19:00 -  Shares information on where you connect find out more about him and his book. Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 235
• Rob's Blog
• Robs’s GitHub
• Rob’s Twitter
• Text Processing with Ruby
• Pragmatic Book Shelf

Sponsors:

• Code Badges
• Get a Coder Job

Picks: Charles

• Writing a book in Markdown

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Aaron Sumner This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Aaron Sumner. Aaron is a senior software engineer at O’Reilly Media as well as runs the blog Everyday Rails and wrote a book entitled Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec. He first got into programming when his school got a computer and he took a computer class at a local community college that he took in order to learn how to write games. They talk about how he got into Ruby, what he is proud of contributing to the community, why he decided to write his book, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 353
• Aaron intro
• Writer of Everyday Rails blog and the book Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec
• How did you first get into programming?
• University of Kansas – Links browser
• Web development in college
• How did you get into Ruby?
• Perl and PHP
• Got to decide which stack to use at new job – tried out Rails and Django
• Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
• What are the things that you get excited about?
• What have you done in the community that you’re proud of?
• Why did you write the book about testing in Rails?
• Saw that very few books were available
• Deliberate about how to learn testing
• Writing the book based off of his popular blog posts
• Self-published on LeanPub
• Writing a book was a good next step for him at the time
• Where has most of your contribution to the community been?
• Speaks at conferences
• Active in meetups
• What are you working on currently?
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 353
• O’Reilly Media
• Everyday Rails
• Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec
• Links
• Ruby
• Perl
• Rails

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Justin Collins This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Justin Collins. Justin is most well known in the Ruby community for Brakeman and he was previously on Ruby Rogues Episode 219. Justin first got into programming when he was about 11 or 12 when his uncle handed down to him his TRS-80 Model 100 computer. They talk about his experience with event-driven programming, how he got into Ruby, what it was about Ruby that really got him excited, how Brakeman came to be, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 219
• Known for Brakeman
• How did you first get into programming?
• Interested in computers around 11 or 12
• TRS-80 Model 100
• Started off with Basic
• Event driven programming
• How did you get into Ruby?
• Computer Science major in college
• C++, Java, and C in college
• Perl, Python, and Ruby
• His first real experience with Ruby
• Rails was “too cool” at the beginning
• What was it about Ruby that really got you excited?
• Really liked Ruby’s aesthetics
• Very much a “feel” kind of person
• Fun, new, and welcoming community with Ruby
• How starting off with Basic has affected him now
• How did you get into security, Rails, and Brakeman?
• Needed an internship
• Internship with security department
• AT&T interactive
• Is there anything else that you’ve done in the Ruby community that you’re prod of?
• Rails-sqli.org
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 219
• Brakeman
• Ruby
• Perl
• Python
• Rails
• Rails-sqli.org
• @presidentbeef
• presidentbeef.com
• Justin’s GitHub
• JavaScript Jabber Episode 201

Sponsors:...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Sean Fioritto This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Sean Fioritto. Sean is a developer that five years ago quit his job to do his own thing and work on different projects such as Sketching with CSS, Angular Escape Plan training, and consulting. He first got into programming when he had an idea to create things such as rooms and spells in his MOO game. They talk about how he got into professional style programming, how he got into drawing with CSS, why he created the Angular Escape Plan, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 203
• Sean intro
• Works with Angular, React, Vue, and many other frameworks
• Focus on front-end
• How did you first get into programming?
• Dad got him a book on Python – how he got into Python
• Playing on a “MOO”
• CodeWarrior
• How did you get into professional style programming?
• Studied Computer Science and Piano in college
• Got started with Python
• Not a Ruby developer, but has worked with Rails
• Artificial Intelligence by Peter Norvig
• Having fun with coding
• How did you come around to the drawing with CSS stuff?
• Had no clue as to what he was going to do after graduation
• Being the only trained programmer on the team
• Working with prototypes
• Where did the idea to create the Angular Escape Plan come from?
• Angular was very up and coming
• Helping others to understand Angular 1
• jQuery
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 203
• Sketching with CSS
• Angular Escape Plan
• Angular
• React
• Vue
• Python
• Ruby
• Rails
• Artificial Intelligence by Peter Norvig

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Nadia Odunayo This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Nadia Odunayo. Nadia was previously on Ruby Rogues Episode 264 and she used to have her own podcast called Ruby Book Club. She first got into programming because when she was in college she launched a creative writing publication and she was frustrated that she had to keep asking others for help. This was when she started researching coding and how it all worked so that she could put her ideas into action. They talk about Ruby being the first programming language she learned, the importance of learning both the frontend and the backend, her desire to run her own thing, her need to find a company that would support her learning, and more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 264
• Ruby Book Club
• How did you first get into programming?
• Hated having to ask other for help
• Studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at University
• Code First: Girls
• Have you done much with your degree?
• Her first talk as a junior Ruby developer
• Economics is about how people behave
• Was Ruby your first programming language?
• Learning HTML, CSS and the Ruby and Rails
• Frontend VS backend
• How long was the program?
• Learning Ruby first and the pros to that
• Sinatra
• Do you feel like the boot camp prepared you to be a full-time Ruby developer?
• Wanting to run her own thing
• Doing these courses only scratches the surface
• How did you find a company that supported your learning?
• Pivotal Labs
• TDD and pairing
• When she joined Pivotal VS now
• What are you doing currently?
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 264
• Ruby Book Club
• Code First: Girls
• Ruby
• Rails
• Sinatra
• Pivotal Labs
• @nodunayo
• nadiaodunayo.com
• Nadia’s GitHub

Sponsors:

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