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How to become successful rubyist
Ryan host and produce Railscasts — free Ruby on Rails screencasts.
I was working on a large PHP site which was getting unwieldy. I looked into alternatives and Ruby on Rails seemed like the best choice. I first used it to build a smaller site and then rewrote the larger PHP app in it.
Where, and how, do you search for work now? Can you give me some advice on the best ways to find Ruby related work?
I am still employed full time at that same job. However I have received offers for consulting and other projects. It helps to get your name out there and build up a reputation in the community. Create some open-source tools that are useful to others and help answer questions. You will learn a lot from this. Also add your name to workingwithrails.com and start building a profile.
There are also several job sites out there which can help you find something. If you can't find anything in your local area consider working remotely.
What advice would you give a Ruby beginner without any projects ready to show?
If you are new to programming and Ruby, start with some beginner books and tutorials. However, there comes a time shortly afterwards you need to leap into a real project. Start with something small but is useful in the real world. Half of the battle then is learning how to use Google and research topics which you aren't familiar with.
What books, or sites, or recipes, or whatever else you can recommend (they may be about productivity, or negotiation, or thinking - anything you think will help me live a better life as a programmer)?
The Pragmatic Programmer is one of my favorite books on programming along with Refactoring. However neither of these are going to do much for you if you do not keep programming and continue looking for ways to improve yourself.
There are hundreds of great sites on Ruby and Rails, too many to list here. But ultimately you want to get very familiar with the documentation: reading RDocs, etc. Beyond this there are a ton of blogs and other useful tutorials. I usually just use Google to find the resources I need for a given task.
How much time per week do you work? How do you keep yourself productive and focused?
I have a full time job working on a Ruby on Rails site, however I also work on Railscasts during the weekends. Staying focused and motivating myself is a challenge. I like to dedicate blocks of time to working on something and avoid interruptions.
I keep a very simple todo list which is just a text file of the various things I want to accomplish that day or week. I have tried many productivity applications but I find I spend too much time organizing my tasks rather than doing them. Keeping it plain text helps.
Mac OS X Terminal, TextMate and Safari are the primary applications I use. I rarely find the need to go outside of these.
Thanks for the interview!
Thank you very much!
