My Ruby Story

This week on My Ruby Story, Charles speaks with Adam Cuppy. Adam is the co-founder at Zeal, a software consultancy that specializes in web and mobile applications. Adam describes his journey as an actor in theater and fine arts, then made his way into tech. Adam has been working and contributing to the Ruby community for at least the last decade. In this episode, we learn more about how Adam got into programming.  Adam talks about having to learn JavaScript and HTML to build a contact page, this was  Adam's the initial spark into programming. Adam talks about how he got into Ruby and the swiftness in building amazing programs and tools.  Adam talks about his contributions, favorite things to do in Ruby, and what is coming up next. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Adam journey from the theater arts, marketing, creative director, website design, PHP, Rails, etc.What qualifications do you need to be a programmer?Building something amazing in a short amount of time.Growing and  deep contribution to the R

This week on My Ruby Story, Charles speaks with Allison McMillan. Allison is a software developer at Collective Idea, a software consulting company that solves real-world software problems. Allison is very excited about working on a number of projects and learning new things in the development world. Allison was a recent guest on Ruby Rogues and will be a speaker at Ruby Dev Summit coming up on October 16-21, 2017. In this episode we learn more about Allison’s journey as a startup founder, to make a career change to a developer, all while and making a name in the dev community and gaining a dev job. Allison talks about her involvement and contributions to the Ruby community. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Allison got into programming working as a non-profit executive and dealing with change in the organization.Getting in involve  in the DC Tech Community Joining the Rails Girls WorkshopGot her first job by attending the Ruby Conf. at the Scholar Guide ProgramWorking Remotely as a junior developerDo

Tweet this Episode Jason Swett is a former Ruby Rogues panelist and the author of Angular on Rails. He's also a contractor and corporate trainer. Jason and Chuck dive into Jason's story getting into programming, Ruby, and talk about his current and past ventures in entrepreneurship. We also talk about writing courses and ebooks and blog posts. Links: PascalGeocitiesAngelfirePerlSymfony frameworkPHPCodeIgniterDrupalLaravelLispClojurePythonDjangoRubyRailsAmir Rajan's My Ruby StoryAngular on RailsBasecampMicroconfJasonSwett.netAmazon AWSIndie Hackers PostJustin GordonJustin Gordon's episode on Ruby RoguesPhoenixElixirReactVueWebpackerPrototype.jsJQueryTodd MottoGreen BitsEmail Jason@jasonswett Picks Jason: Amazon Web Services in Actionawsrails.com Chuck GitlabMattermostThe Daily LasagnaEntreprogrammersRuby Dev Summit

Tweet this Episode MRS 020: Ruberto Paulo Today’s episode is a My Ruby Story with Ruberto Paulo. He is going to be speaking in the Ruby Dev Summit in October. Listen to learn more about Rub! [01:10] – Introduction to Ruberto Paulo Rob is a programmer in Cape Town, South Africa. He’s been programming in Ruby for the last 6 years. He has also been quite in different areas of business from sales, manufacturing, to teaching. He has also spoken on one of the Ruby conferences in South Africa this year. And he’s going to be speaking in Ruby Dev Summit in October. At one stage, programming for Rob was quite a painful experience. You can get stuck in doing normal projects, eventually, you’d lose the light that you found. The talk is about Date Night with Ruby. That’s the title of the talk. It’s really about what can we do to re-ignite that fire with Ruby? We’re going to take a look at the language as if it’s a person. [05:15] – How did you get into programming? Rob’s dad had a laptop that was running MS-DOS. At

MRS 019: Eric Berry Today's episode of My Ruby Story is an interview with Eric Berry, who is our newest panelist on Ruby Rogues. [01:10] Introduction to Eric Eric is one of Chuck's friends from early in his programming career. Eric is @coderberry on Twitter. He's been a Ruby developer for about 9 years and doing software for about 19 years. [02:15] How Eric got into programming He was hired to do HTML for a company called vLender. Eric worked in Photoshop 2 (pre-layers). He, then, went on an LDS mission and while on his mission, he built a system to track the cars and assets for the mission. Then, his brother moved out to Switzerland to join an eCommerce company. Eric bought a PHP book, read it, got a passport, and started showing up at his work. Eventually they hired him. They started shifting over to Java. They coded Java with VIM. While in Switzerland, Eric and his brother had created an app that allowed them to share photos with family back home. His brother raised funds and they moved to Engla

MRS 018: Kinsey Ann Durham Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Kinsey Ann Durham. She is one of the speakers for the Ruby Dev Summit. Listen to learn more about Kinsey! [01:15] – Introduction to Kinsey Ann Durham Kinsey was on episode 180 of the Ruby Rogues podcast. They talked about Barriers to New Developers. It’s been 3 years. She is also one of the speakers for the Ruby Dev Summit, which is coming up in October. [02:55] – How did you get into programming? RailsBridge workshop Kinsey got into programming, not through the traditional Computer Science route or boot camp / code school route. She actually did a RailsBridge workshop 4 or 5 years ago in Denver. RailsBridge is part of the larger organization called Bridge Foundry. It’s a weekend workshop where you have mentors and teachers who teach you how to build an app in whatever language or framework from scratch. Food is provided. It’s mainly for women but men are welcome as well as long as you accompany a female. Brother Kinsey’s step brother,

MRS 017: Hal Fulton Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Hal Fulton. Hal talked about his contributions to the Ruby community. He is the author of The Ruby Way. Listen to learn more about Hal! [01:20] – Introduction to Hal Fulton Hal is the author of the Ruby Way, which was one of the books that Charles picked up when he started programming in Ruby. It’s still being published and still up to date. Hal still loves computers and programming but he admitted that he can’t keep up with it anymore. [03:50] – How did you get into programming? Hal didn’t really have the opportunity to get into programming at a young age. So, the first chance he had was when he just turned 17, he went to a summer program, which was a 6-week program at a college. It was dealing with Genetics and Population Genetics. He had lab work and learned some mathematical models. He also learned BASIC and a couple of primitive microcomputers with different versions of BASIC. His first BASIC programs were the hello world and followed by Po

MRS 016 Marc-Andre Cournoyer Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Marc-Andre Cournoyer. He was the creator of the Thin web server and he will be speaking at the Ruby Dev Summit. On this episode, Marc talked about how he got into programming and Ruby. Listen to learn more about Marc! [01:05] – Introduction to Marc Marc is the creator of the Thin web server, one of the most popular Ruby server. He also had some minor contributions to Ruby. One of them is called Tinyrb, which is a small Ruby VM. Then, he wrote a book about creating your own programming language. He will be speaking at Ruby Dev Summit. [02:45] – How did you get into programming? Marc’s first experience with a computer was when he’s around 8 or 9 years old. It was on the early 1990s. His parents won a Commodore 64 at the grocery store. He got bored really fast with the games so he looked at other things. One of them is the Commodore Basic. You could not save on a Commodore 64 if you didn’t add the tape recorder so he would have to start ag

MRS 015 Amir Rajan Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Amir Rajan. He was on Episode 272 of Ruby Rogues. Amir talked about where he used Ruby and how he got into RubyMotion. Listen to learn more about Amir! [01:40] – Introduction to Amir Rajan He was on episode 272 of Ruby Rogues and he talked about Game Development and RubyMotion. That was in August 2016. [06:35] – How did you get into programming? Amir had his Intel 80386 and was trying to install Win Commander on it. It came with this green booklet that says “cd C: /…”. He installed that exe command but he didn’t have enough space on the computer. He ended up deleting the operating system – Windows 3.1. He reinstalled it myself and he thought that was programming. His first exploration in programming was actually a business development course like a business programming course. They’ve built applications using Visual Basic 4 and 5 but he didn’t understand the concept of variables. After that, StarCraft 2 came out. That was around 1998. It has a

MRS 014 Noel Rappin Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Noel Rappin. Noel talked about his contributions to the Ruby community and how they explore new technologies like Elixir. Listen to learn more about Noel! [00:01:40] – Introduction to Noel Rappin Noel is in episodes 30, which was about Software Craftsmanship. He was also on episode 185, which was about Rails 4 Test Prescriptions. And then, the latest one was 281, which was about Take My Money. [00:02:45] – How did you get into programming? Noel is a stereotypical nerdy kid so he started programming when he was young. He had afterschool classes in Applesoft BASIC at a place near their house. He had TRS-80 and Texas Instruments, and a couple of other things. [00:03:35] – Computer Science degree Noel has a Computer Science degree and a Ph.D. from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, which was in the intersection of user interface design and Ed tech. He was designing interfaces for teaching, specifically for teaching engineers and developers.

MRS 013 – Dave Thomas This episode is a My Ruby Story with Dave Thomas. Dave has spoken about Elixir at two Ruby Remote Confs. He challenges the way people think about the way they do code. Listen to learn more about Dave! [00:02:42] How did you get into programming? Dave first got into programming when he was attending school in England. At the age of sixteen everyone takes national tests. A group of friends and Dave took these tests early so they did not have classes to take spring semester. Their school decided to send them to take a computer science class at a nearby technical college. There he fell in love with programming and decided to switch his focus in college. He went to Imperial College, where computer science was a brand new degree: it was only in the second year of being offered. [00:05:45] How did you get into Ruby? Dave has always been a language nerd. In the 90s you had to be determined to work with computer languages. People posted their compilers on usenet in parts. He downloaded file

MRS: 012 Simon Moro This episode is a My Ruby Story with Simon Moro. Simon is an Australian record producer and mixer. He has been teaching himself Ruby for the last 18 months, Rails framework, and is a frustrated aspiring entrepreneur. Through negative experiences with outsourcing and finding tech co-founders, he wanted to empower and educate himself. How did you get into programming? He remembers that the first computer in his home was actually called a dinosaur. His first experience with a computer made him intrigued. He was a lot of gaming consoles when he was young. Personally liked Sega and his best friend liked Nintendo. It was like an early Apple vs. Android rivalry. He was introduced to visual basic in an InfoTech class in high school. His high school didn’t have a strong tech department so it was a very simple class. There was a button that you would click which would display a dialogue box with a calculator. He was fascinated by the way you could write instructions. He had always been full of i

MRS O11 Greg Baugues This episode of My Ruby Story features Greg Baugues. Greg has been on two previous episodes, episode 142 where he discussed mental illness, and episode 258 where he discussed Twilio. Greg has been at Twilio for three and a half years. He worked on the developer/evangelism team for three years. A couple of months ago he became the lead developer of the community team. He lived in Chicago for eleven years, where he first started using Ruby. He moved to Brooklyn, New York a year ago. How did you get into programming? When he was five or six his parents owned a TRS-80 when he was five or six. It had a cassette drive and when turned on it booted into basic. He wrote programs in basic on this computer and it was an instant gratification to him. On a back cover of a magazine, he read there would be a code printed in basic that he would copy line by line. Later, his family bought a PC that had MS-DOS with QBasic, and his friends introduced him to Pascal, C, and C++. When he graduated high sch

My Ruby Story Dave Kimura On this episode Charles talks to Ruby Rouges panelist Dave Kimura, the creator of Drifting Ruby, the popular Ruby on Rails Screencast and Blog. Find out more about how Dave got interested in programming and first introduced to the world of Ruby. Dave also talks about how and when he started Drifting Ruby. How did you get into programming? Dave discusses living in Germany during middle school in the 90s. During this time, he owned a simple Mac LC II. He found a floppy disc that contained a program called Chipmunk Basic, which was his very first exposure into the world of programming. His interest with programming was further sparked by computers at school. These computers were loaded with three different programs: Fortran, Pascal, and C compiler. All of these peaked his interest in programming further.  
 Charles and Dave discuss the impact technology made.  Dave tells Charles that anything that pre-dates the Internet feels like a different world; one in which learning was more

My Ruby Story 009 Brian Hogan On this episode we have another My Ruby Story and there is a good chance you might recognize him, he is one of Devchat.tv’s panelists Brian Hogan. Aside from being a panelists on Ruby Rouges, he also has a couple other projects like codecaster.io as well as Railsmentors.org. How did you get into programming? Brain talks about how his Dad has an old Apple 2 computer. His father was a teacher for the blind and the computer had a box on it that would talk. His Dad taught him that computers can have programs written for them and make them do things. Brain talks about having math issues one evening and his Dad helped by making a math program that would quiz him. His Dad wasn’t a programmer but he had picked up some of it from being around it. Brain talks about how the library had games you could get for the Apple 2 but you had to write code into the computer to make it work. He started tweaking the code to learn that it adjusted things in the game like the speed of the spaceship

My Ruby Story 315 Jordan Hudgens In this episode it’s another My Ruby Story and this week’s story is Jordan Hudgens’. Jordan is lead instructor of Bottega, a code school based in Lehi, Utah but also located in Phoenix and Salt Lake City. You’ll hear a bit about how Decamp.com came to be as well as what makes it stand out from the rest. You’ll also catch a couple tangents including one on artificial intelligence, augmented reality, an IoT. Don’t miss this one! How did you get intro programming? Jordan talks about how at the age of 12 his father had a business and with their budget couldn’t afford a web designer. His father offers Jordan to buy him a computer if he can build the website. He muddles his way through HTML documentation to create his first, and particularly ugly website 20 years ago. When he turned 16, he started working on better applications as well as learned PHP. How did you go from PHP to Ruby? As Jordan got further and further, he worked a lot in the energy sector, including Chevron an

My Ruby Story with Charles Max Wood 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. How did you get into Programming? 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. Inspired by his Grandfather 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 intere

Today's episode features the Ruby Story of Jamis Buck. James guested on episode 268, where he talked about Mazes for Programmers. For 9 years, he worked at 37Signals as Software Developer. How did he get into programming, and what is he currently up to? Tune in!

Tune in as Charles Max Wood interviews Fabio Akita! Fabio has been working on Ruby for more than 10 years. He also blogs about it, and participates in Ruby Conf and in the programming community in Brazil. He appeared on episode 285, where talked about the conference and the community. Learn more about his journey and contributions in programming.

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood interviews Derrick Reimer. Derrick is the co-founder of Drip, an email marketing automation platform that's designed for startups and consultants. He appeared on episode 254, and talked about Building/Scaling a Rails Saas App. It's interesting to know how Derrick got into programming. Tune in!