Ruby Rogues

Offshoring and Latin American Developers - David HemmatFor this episode of Ruby Rogues we have Jason Swett and Brian Hogan for our panel along with Charles Max Wood and a special guest, David Hemmat from BlueCoding.com. David and the Blue Coding team work to connect developer talent to businesses in need through a thorough process of vetting as well as a database collection of potential developers. Check out this episode to learn more!How did you get started?1:34David talks about going to school in the Dominican Republic worked locally, but later found work with US companies. He also set up a friend with a US job and they realized that there may be a demand as someone to bridge the gap. Developers did not have the access or a way to reach opportunities aboard so he started BlueCoding.com.About Blue Coding2:32BlueCoding.com has clients in the US and Canada. They focus on Latin America due to having close timezones in relation to the majority of companies that would be looking for developers. Also, Blue Coding helps in regard to bridging the cultural gap. Latin American work culture can be different that US or Canadian culture. David talks about how it’s much of a communication difference. Developers sometimes will agree to jobs they are unable to do and are timid to communicate and often just disappear. Despite this, many Latin American companies spawned from United States companies and will tend to have a similar working environment and culture as US companies.The General Experience With Offshore Hiring4:17David and the panel chat about their offshore hiring experiences. David expresses that there is sometimes an issue of many developers taking on work, and then seemingly disappearing. Often times coming back with excuses or in some cases actually over committing to work and just failing to communicate properly from the start. In some cases, like with countries like Venezuela, has a less reliable environment for the developers with things like power outages.“Not All Good Developers Are Good Freelancers.”6:18Freelancers tend to need a different skillset. Extra communication and need tools in place like time tracking and daily reports , etc. Companies that hire freelancers or offshore hiring in general need to have tools setup as well. David expresses that the best developers often are the ones that already have full time jobs. Blue Coding tries to help those developers find a better opportunity and has structured systems to create a workflow that works for both parties. David talks about having those tools in place for the developer including the time tracking and daily reports.The Companies Tools.8:33Blue Coding will also check with the client companies to make sure they have tools as well to help both parties have a smooth workflow. Project management software for the developer to see what they should work on next.Rates9:04Rates vary between $30 and $45 an hour. David tries to stay away from junior developers, looking for developers with 3–4 years working experience. Some companies pay $30 to $60. Latin American countries generally see a starting rate of $30 an hour. Asian countries can start as low as $10 an hour, but in rare cases. Some developers on the opposite side of things charge $100 an hour.Getting Offshore Developers10:47Most people start with upwork.com or Freelancer.com or something like that. Lower overhead but very limited vetting. Buyout fees are very high as well on these sites. There are companies similar to Blue Coding that are staffing companies that exist. Also, direct networking. Networking directly is extremely efficient. If you have a bad work history, networking also comes into play. David talks about their biggest source for developers are other developers, reaching out to find good hires by networking through the community.Dealing with ‘Boom and Bust.’14:19Freelancers tend to run into boom and bust cycles, loads of work followed by slow spells. David tries to avoid this by hiring carefully and picking clients carefully. Looking for long term projects, either be a continuous flow of projects or one large projects. With this focus on long term relationship building, BlueCoding is able to have much lower rates. Other companies usually don’t have safety from downtime, offering internal work to make up for it.Finding Companies that Hire Offshore16:08Most countries have job boards to help. Also, technology specific job boards. But it’s hard to compete there. US companies won’t hire offshore developers for the same rates and the same skills. You have to be really good. David pushes developers to have plenty of experience.How to Get Noticed?17:46Companies can be prejudice, but isn’t seen too often. Becoming a top level talent is key. Being average is harder. As an average or novice in an area with no community, finding online communities, Facebook groups, LinkedIn communities, working on open source projects, and going to events can help.Working remotely and being good at it [22:02]
 It’s a two part effort. Companies can have tools to make things easier, but as a developer, you can request them. Communicate all online. All of the office talk should be online via Slack or some other documented system. Code reviews and Peer programming helps remote developers feel like a part of the team.Onshoring vs Offshoring24:28Some companies are hiring remote developers from the US. Why would someone want to hire from outside the country? Ultimately it comes down to finding a developer that fits in with what a company needs as well as matches the budget. Cost of living can change the rates for developers as well as where the company is located. David expresses that he wants to find really good developers, even if it means reaching out to Brazil or other parts of Latin America.Medical, Taxes, and Benefits24:43Each country has different laws. For example Dominican Republic has a law that states if you contract someone for over 3 months, they are considered employees and require benefits. Some countries allow Freelancers to work long term. Health care varies between companies.The Finical and Risks.32:14Freelancers and hourly workers tend to have less working time, spending some time each day to chase down work as well as managing time. Developers in general should notice that projects in general can have budget cuts and even end prematurely. In general a developer working as an employee will need to account for the benefits and extras thrown in when considering their rates.The Companies34:02What kind of companies are looking for this as a solution to their staffing problem? Most companies are smaller companies, 1 to 20 employees with a lot of long term development work. Generally three sectors, non tech companies that need tech work, digital agencies, and tech startups or established companies that already have a software product that needs to be maintained.How to find the Companies?36:30It’s a work in progress. References are vital, David talks about how vetting for developers ends with a very happy client that gives references. Also they spend a lot of time networking, conferences, meeting people online as well as cold calling. David mentions that it’s hard to express the quality of their service through email.Getting Started with Blue Coding?37:22For DevelopersGo to BlueCoding.com and find the link that says “join the team if you’re a developer” and you can connect that way. Just reach out to them and they will set up a conversation with you and see if there is a good fit. Then once a project comes in they will set you up with the vetting process.For CompaniesBlueCoding will want to set up a call with you. Reach out to them and setup a call. They will work through if you need a developer and what that developer looks like in regard to technical skills, personal skills, and general ability.Then the developers and clients have a meeting to make sure everyone is comfortable. Being comfortable is the most important part for this connection to end in a long term relationship.PicksJasonSamsungnite Columbian Leather Flat Over The Top Laptop BagBrianNew MacBook with Touch barCharles My Ruby Story Podcasts
Online Summit Format
Ruby Dev Summit
Ruby Rogues Parlay on Slack David Micro Conf.
Macbook Air
One Minute ManagerLinks to Keep up with David His Medium
BlueCoding.com
Email him Special Guest: David Hemmat.

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This week’s episode is a bit different. Charles Max Wood interviews… Charles Max Wood! Hear a bit about how Charles’ grandfather inspired him towards his career in programing, how handling technical support for Mozy somehow led him to writing Ruby code, and hear a bit about what he is working on now! Stay tuned.

Charles talks about remembering some of his first programming exposure as far back as second grade. He talks about programming the iconic turtle to move around on the screen and draw shapes. Later on he had more experience in a particular Math class in high school, this time Pascal, then of course the TI-85.

Charles gives a bit of a background story on his inspiration for taking electronics classes in school, his Grandfather. His Grandfather was an inventor that created various inventions, including tools used in the manufacturing of rocket boosters for the NASA Space Shuttle. Charles became very interested in electronics and took his first electronic class.

Charles then attended Brigam Young University majoring in Electrical Engineering, giving him even further chances to experience programming. To Charles, programming seemed fun but didn’t feel serious enough to hold weight as his career. His interest grew in computers. He eventually switches to Computer Engineering and graduates, also picking up a job in the office of information technology at BYU.

Charles talks about how programming in college tended to lean towards games and fun projects, and it wasn’t until after college that the projects that he got involved with felt as if the work he was doing meant something. From building a system to help college students find apartments that fit their needs, to Bash scripts that made some of the IT updates at BYU faster and safer.

Charles then lands a job with Mozy, the popular online backup service. Mozy’s systems were all running with Ruby on Rails and Charles worked as Technical Support. Mozy gets publicity in The Wall Street Journal, increasing the Technical Support workload. Charles then writes a Ruby on Rails system that created a smoother flow when cycling through emails. He soon added extra features like canned responses and a way to measure how often canned responses were sent as a way to highlight any particular issues Mozy was having.

Charles talks about switching from a Management position to a developer track and working with a man name Don, who had an original iPod and listened to podcasts. Introducing him to Rails Envy, a podcast by Jason Seifer and Gregg Pollack. After emailing Gregg, to Charles’ surprise he responds and encourages him to start his own podcast. Charles talks about how he feels his main contribution to the Ruby community is his podcast. Since then he has had a chance to interview some really influential people, including David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails. Outside of the podcast, Charles adds that he has also taken over Teach Me To Code and has contributed a few open source libraries, one connecting to project HoneyPot, as well as contributing indirectly through his other podcast work including JavaScript Jabber, and Adventures in Angular.

Charles talks about hoping to get back into writing open source code and even starting a project. Charles spends most of his time doing ‘businessy’ stuff for the podcast as well as the conferences, currently working on putting together a Ruby Dev Summit. Charles talks about a few new podcast shows he is working on, including bringing some requested content like web application security, React, and Elixir. Charles talks a bit about other things he is involved in at home and creating systems to help him manage his busy workload.

Electro-Voice RE20 Microphone

Behringer Xenyx 802

Roland EDIROL R-09

ZOOM H6

Audio Technica 2100

GetACoderJob.com

Devchat.tv

Charles’ Twitter

Devchat.tv’s Twitter

Charles GitHub

RR 314 DynamoDB on Rails with Chandan JhunjhunwalToday's Ruby Rogues podcast features DynamoDB on Rails with Chandan Jhunjhunwal. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that helps your team solve managing infrastructure issues like setup, costing and maintenance. Take some time to listen and know more about DynamoDB![00:02:18] – Introduction to Chandan JhunjhunwalChanchan Jhunjhunwal is an owner of Faodail Technology, which is currently helping many startups for their web and mobile applications. They started from IBM, designing and building scalable mobile and web applications. He mainly worked on C++ and DB2 and later on, worked primarily on Ruby on Rails.Questions for Chandan[00:04:05] – Introduction to DynamoDB on RailsI would say that majority of developers work in PostgreSQL, MySQL or other relational database. On the other hand, Ruby on Rails is picked up by many startup or founder for actually implementing their ideas and bringing them to scalable products. I would say that more than 80% of developers are mostly working on RDBMS databases. For the remaining 20%, their applications need to capture large amounts of data so they go with NoSQL.In NoSQL, there are plenty of options like MongoDB, Cassandra, or DynamoDB. When using AWS, there’s no provided MongoDB. With Cassandra, it requires a lot of infrastructure setup and costing, and you’ll have to have a team which is kind of maintaining it on a day to day basis. So DynamoDB takes all those pain out of your team and you no longer have to focus on managing the infrastructure.[00:07:35] – Is it a good idea to start with a regular SQL database and then, switch to NoSQL database or is it better to start with NoSQL database from day one?It depends on a couple of factors. For many of the applications, they start with RDBMS because they just want to get some access, and probably switch to something like NoSQL. First, you have to watch the incoming data and their capacity. Second is familiarity because most of the developers are more familiar with RDBMS and SQL queries.For example, you have a feed application, or a messaging application, where you know that there will be a lot of chat happening and you’d expect that you’re going to take a huge number of users. You can accommodate that in RDBMS but I would probably not recommend that.[00:09:30] Can I use DynamoDB as a caching mechanism or cache store?I would not say replacement, exactly. On those segments where I could see that there’s a lot of activity happening, I plugged in DynamoDB. The remaining part of the application was handled by RDBMS. In many applications, what I’ve seen is that they have used a combination of them.[00:13:05] How do you decide if you actually want to use DynamoDB for all the data in your system?The place where we say that this application is going to be picked from day one is where the number of data which will be coming will increase. It also depends on the development team that you have if they’re familiar with DynamoDB, or any other NoSQL databases.[00:14:50] Is DynamoDB has document store or do you have of columns?You can say key value pairs or document stores. The terminologies are just different and the way you design the database. In DynamoDB, you have something like hash key and range key.[00:22:10] – Why don’t we store images in the database?I would say that there are better places to store the, which is faster and cheaper. There are better storage like CDN or S3.Another good reason is that if you want to fetch a proper size of image based on the user devices screen, resizing and all of the stuff inside the database could be cumbersome. You’ll repeat adding different columns where we’ll be storing those different sizes of images.[00:24:40] – Is there a potentially good reason for NoSQL database as your default go-to data store?If you have some data, which is complete unstructured, if you try to store back in RDBMS, it will be a pain. If we talk about the kind of media which gets generated in our day to day life, if you try to model them in a relational database, it will be pretty painful and eventually, there will be a time when you don’t know how to create correlations.[00:28:30] – Horizontally scalable versus vertically scalableIn vertically scalable, when someone posts, we keep adding that at the same table. As we add data to the table, the database size increases (number of rows increases). But in horizontally scalable, we keep different boxes connected via Hadoop or Elastic MapReduce which will process the added data.[00:30:20] – What does it take to hook up a DynamoDB instance to a Rails app?We could integrate DynamoDB by using the SDK provided by AWS. I provided steps which I’ve outlined in the blog - how to create different kinds of tables, how to create those indexes, how to create the throughput, etc. We could configure AWS SDK, add the required credential, then we could create different kinds of tables.[00:33:00] – In terms of scaling, what is the limit for something like PostgreSQL or MySQL, versus DynamoDB?There’s no scalability limit in DynamoDB, or any other NoSQL solutions.PicksDavid Kimura            

• CorgUI

Jason Swett     

• Database Design for Mere Mortals

Charles Maxwood

• VMWare Workstation
• GoCD
• Ruby Rogues Parley
• Ruby Dev Summit

Chandan Jhunjhunwal     

• Twitter @ChandanJ
• [email protected]

Special Guest: Chandan Jhunjhunwal.

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How to Handle WTF'sToday's Ruby Rogues podcast features How to Handle WTF's. David, Brian, Jerome and Charles discuss front end frameworks. Tune in to learn more about when to use rails, and other frameworks!How do you choose your Framework?How do you want the app to behave, would be a good question to ask before you choose your framework. When you're mocking something up, it's paramount to think of the end product.Who are you doing choosing your Framework for? Are you using it for you, for your peers, for your business? Tune in to hear what our panelists think!Hey, this is cool. I want to share it.A great way to communicate with folks in the community, is to not force newer technology on each other, but share it. Encouraging stretching of skills is great, but trying to force yourself or someone else to use a Framework may not be the way to go. The panelists discuss their experiences in the community, and how different attitudes have affected members using different technologies.CollaborateAsk around! Need help? Reach out to devs in users groups, etc. Make the investment in your own skills, in your team skills, and don't be afraid to learn something new and ask questions.Picks:David: Get OpenJerome: Edibit, Extreme Ownership, New Rules Brian: Elm Charles: The Vanishing American Adult, Giftology Episode Links:Hacker News

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How to Handle WTFsOn today’s episode of Ruby Rogues we are chatting about WTFs. On our panel we’ve got Dave Carmona, Brian Hogan and I’m Charles Max Wood. We talk a bit about some of the recent WTFs we’ve encountered and some of our tricks for handling it, including talking to a Rubber Duck. It’s a fun episode so check it out!WTF’s in Two FlavorsCharles starts out the episode inquiring to the panel about two different kinds of WTFs. The whats and the whys. WTFs that happen and developers don’t understand what the WTF is, and then on the other hand WTFs that happen and the developer doesn’t know why it’s happening.Unreadable Perl and the Rubber DuckDavid talks a bit about how hard it is sometimes to read and understand what is happening with Perl code, even if you wrote it yourself. Sometimes debugging Perl codes many years later, running into syntax errors end up being a ‘Why’ WTF. He introduces a method to use for ‘Why’ WTFs that he calls the ‘Rubber Ducky Debugging’ method. The ‘Rubber Ducky Debugging Method’ is when you place a rubber duck on your desk, and when you encounter a WTF you can simply talk through the issue to the duck to help you think through your issue. Brian and Charles add that this method works fine with real people as well and have done it many times with their wives, even for issues that don’t involve code.Blaming it on Past BrianBrain mentions that sometimes when working with someone else’s code, it’s easy to blame the previous developer. Unfortunately in his case, Brian finds that “Past Brian” has often been the culprit.Dave and Code he Doesn’t UnderstandWhen encountering classes that are really big with many different methods, find the entry point. If it doesn’t have a traditional initializer or call method for the entry point, you can look around other relevant parts of the code to try and figure it out. Sometimes if it’s obfuscated, you can go through variables and rename them to more relevant names to identify what they are doing to help understand the method at hand.Puts Debugging Aaron Patterson had written an article on his blog about ‘Puts debugging’ that turned Dave onto the the untraditional debugging method. Dave will sometimes write a separate debugger class to separate puts into a different log to keep it organized.Brian’s Version of Puts DebuggingBrian mentions that when working on a rails application he will sometimes raise the object he wants to inspect. Errors in Ruby are often something you wouldn’t expect and being able to quickly inspect the object using raise .Using raises the whole stack including the object, session, and cookies , etc.Dave’s Ruby LifesaversDave also adds that adding the gems to your development better_errors, and then en binding_of_caller are lifesavers. It allows for a more interruptive session with raised errors. Also, in Rails 4 the console feature was added, allowing you to tweak things and play around to debug. Also, Pry is really useful for loop through and investigate. Dave also notes that Pry, while being a great tool, can sometimes be a bit annoying if you have a large number of loops.Crazy Bug Story - BrianBrian talks about how in Elixir the declaring of methods is very similar to Ruby but at the end of Elixir method calls you add keyword do. If you do this in Ruby, the interpreter’s error message is unusual and doesn’t give any information that helps you find the issue, making it very hard to find the issue. This could be very time consuming for the debugger. He adds that having a second pair of eyes helps with issues like these.Crazy Bug Story - DavidDavid talks about working on a personal project late into the night. Using Rails 5.1.1, he thought that maybe his issue with the enumerators. He considered that maybe the issue was with Rails 5.1.1 being that is newer. To test to find out if he caused the error, he recreated a simple bit of code that uses enumerators and saw that it worked, then created the same project in 5.1.1 and it also worked, concluding that he created the issue. Later he found he declared the datatype for the enumerator as a string instead of an int. Brian added that creating a fresh application to test for errors is a great way to start debugging, in comparison to immediately to asking others what the problem might be. This method of checking can have a quick pay off if the code is simple. Also, creating new applications to test gives a great foundation of knowing that the problem is in your own code.Crazy Bug Story - CharlesCharles’ bug was something he encountered in his podcast feed application he created in Rails 4. Charles didn’t read the error message very well so he tried it debugging it with Puts Debugging. It’s turned out that he was using a strftime method that he had accidentally formatted the string wrong, using -’s instead of /’s.Characterizing with a TestIn issues like Charles’ you can take input that’s going into a method and then setup an integration test. Tests like this can be made fairly quickly. By copying and pasting the input parameters into a test like a Capybara test, then you can get a better idea of where the issue actually is.Creating the Error to Fix the ErrorBrain mentions that sometimes when he has a specific error, he will try to write a new set of code that reproduces the issue. Then from there he will try to ‘break’ the broken code in efforts to find a debugging solution in the original code.Making your Production Environment The Same as Your Development EnvironmentIf you’re using something like caching in your production environment, make sure it is set up in your developmental environment. Debugging caching issues can be some of the most complicated bugs to fix. If you set up your environment to be the same it helps. If you need to start the caching over during development or tests, it’s as simple as a CLI command. When you’re doing feature tests, if you do it with caching enabled, you can use timecop. Timecop allows you to essentially time travel to test timing issues without having to wait.Favorite Development ToolsSome of the panelist’s favorite tools are Pry, binding_of_caller, better_errors, Konami, and Sinatra. Google Chrome’s RailsPanel extension Works like MiniProfiler, but digs in further. By adding this gem to your development environment and running it on Chrome, it shows you all the requests that come through, the controller in action, and lists out all the parameters, as well as active record calls and errors.Favorite Production ToolsBrian suggests using any tools available to capture exceptions and error messages. Capturing these issues before the user contacts you makes recreating the issue and debugging it a lot easier. Dave mentions using New Relic to capture performance of application as well as error notification. With New Relic you can adjust the notification threshold and give it actions like sending it to a Slack channel. Then use something like Sumo Logic to concatenate and combine the logs if it’s coming from various servers.Shipping Logs Off FluentD can be used to ship off logs to analyze. In some cases management won’t be okay with shipping things off. Doing things internally can sometimes be too much and using a third party aggregation tools can be helpful.Some Tools Can Be HeavySumo Logic applet is Java based and takes up quite a bit of space. Jenkins is also a Java setup and takes many parameters to get running. In some cases with smaller applications, applets like Sumo Logic can take up more space than the application. Trying to parse multiple servers can be daunting and will definitely need a centralized logging option.Other Logging Tools Elastic.co and Logstash are other logging tools. They have integrations with tools like Docker and Kibana. If you can roll your own logging tools then great. But it’s usually time consuming and takes resources.Getting Information from People and Assume It’s WrongCharles mentions that in some cases, especially in cases where something you’re using is dated, resources can be limited to get information

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Today's Ruby Rogues podcast features Data Corruption in Rails with Peter Bhat Harkins. Peter started in rails since the time version 1.0 was released. He spent 5 years consulting full time, and now runs a consultancy for SAAS companies at Revenue.systems.Few months ago, he spoke at the Rails Remote Conf about Data Corruption in Rails. The issue comes up when a .valid call returns false. It happened twice on his end. Tune in to learn about it, and understand how you can provide an effective solution!Special Guest: Peter Bhat Harkins.

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Today's Ruby Rogues podcast features MOOCs with Sam Joseph. Sam is the Chair of the Board of Trustees and the CoFounder of AgileVentures. They gather people from around the world to form small agile development teams for nonprofits and charities. He has been programming for a couple of years already. Tune in and learn about the massive open online course they're having!Special Guest: Sam Joseph.

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