3. About Me
Career: The “Suit” in technical/creative environments
Industry Duration
Visual Effects 1992 to AFO
Internet Startup 1995 to bubble burst
Defense 2000 to current
4.
5. Who Creates Value?
The Suit: Plan, Manage (cost, schedule, risk, scope), Coordinate,
Customer Development, Marketing, Payroll, Benefits
The Programmer: Makes the Product
6. Cost to make stuff
Industry Thing 1990 2013
Visual Effects Feature Film Crash Sequence $2 million $100,000
Internet
Startup
Build an Online Community $1 million $500
Defense Build an Aircraft $$ $...$$$$$
As technology commoditizes an industry,
you don’t need as many “suits”.
7. Why I am Learning…
to Program
– Professional Improvement: Closer to Value Creation
– Aspiring Entrepreneur
to Program Ruby
– Availability of resources (online, books, people)
– Low barrier to entry, lot of upside
– Local community
– Culture
– Fun
8. Why Program
“If you want to invest two years in something that will
help you, you would do better to learn how to hack than
get an MBA”
– Paul Graham, Y Combinator Founder
“Money Doesn’t Matter”
– Matt Gordon, Expected Behavior
10. How I am Learning
Method Example Pro Con
Online Classes CodeSchool.com
No
configuration
Hard to apply
knowledge
Cookbooks
Agile Dev
with RoR
Instant gratification Fake smart
Online tutorials Variety
Stale,
Quality varies
User groups Rails Brigade Fire hose
Mentor Everything IMA Pest
11. Lessons Learned about Learning
Learning is non-linear
Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition
Make learning your day job
Have a pet project
13. How to Make Learning Ruby Your Day Job
If PC, get Cygwin
Write file management utilities
gem install spreadsheet
Use git
Become extremely productive
Ask for forgiveness, not permission
Requires ‘non-technical-desk-job’
15. Agile Web Development with Rails 4 (Depot)
Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson
Learn Web Development with Ruby on Rails
Michael Hartl
Site Demonstration
16. Learned/Applied From the Books
Competency Prag
Prog
Learn
Ruby
Online Community (registration, user accounts, views) X
Online Store (products, cart, checkout) X
Bootstrap CSS X
Test Driven Development X X
JavaScript (very little) X X
Git / GitHub X X
Heroku X X
Neither book is strong on Active Record (too light or too heavy)
Bold = better