Teach Me To Code Podcast

At Mountain West Ruby Conference, Mike Moore brought up that many members of the Ruby community have lost part of the community roots. Particularly, the acronym MINASWAN, which stands for "Matz is nice and so we are nice." There are a lot of people out there who, rather than looking to help, are looking to fight or trying to look good. The funny thing is that if you can make a real contribution, you do look good. So, here's a discussion on how to contribute to the community in a positive way. Download this Episode

This week's episode is an interview with Chad Fowler—author of The Passionate Programmer.

This week I go into hiring developers and how you determine whether or not they'd make a good employee. The hard thing with hiring is that you really don't know what you're getting until you've made the hire. You can look at their code, pair with them, and talk to them to get a feel for who they are and how they operate, but in the end, there's only one definitive test—putting them to work and seeing how they work out. Download this episode

This turned out to be a great interview with David Heinemeier Hansson. He's the creator of the Ruby on Rails web framework and a partner at 37 signals. We discussed what inspired him to build Ruby on Rails and work in Ruby. We talked about how 37 signals approaches things. We went into the Rails community and its ecosystem. A few things that were mentioned: Capistrano Basecamp On entrepreneurship, David tells us that building a company and concept has never been easier or cheaper. The barrier to entry is extremely low. You need more than programming power or business acumen to start a company. You need people who have an actual skill that will move the product or service forward. Download this Episode

I've been reading the Software Craftsmanship mailing list where they were discussing whether software is a craft. Someone brought up the concept of what makes a "Master Craftsman" in software and I started thinking about how to determine if someone is an expert or master. There are a few concepts out there including these: Someone who has read at least 3 books on a subject. Someone who knows more about a subject than someone else. Someone who has published something on a topic. As discussed in Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) (affiliate link) Here are my thoughts on the subject. Download this Episode

This week's podcast guest is Evan Light. I met Evan at the Ruby|Web Conference at Snowbird. He's responsible for Coulda and the Ruby DCamp. Evan recommended Get Clients Now!(TM): A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches (affiliate link) for marketing as a freelancer. We talked about organizing a conference and what it takes. He also had some great suggestions for people thinking about switching to freelance. I also found his discussion of why he wrote Coulda very interesting. It inspires me to think that if I want something different, I can create it. If you're looking for a way to increase readability of your code, look at flog or metric_fu. Jake Scruggs' talk at Lone Star Ruby Conference 2008 Next month I'll be teaching a Basic Ruby on Rails course. Go check it out and sign up. Download this Episode

Michael Hartl put together a free rails tutorial online. We met at RubyConf and determined to talk about his tutorials. His path into Rails development has been interesting to listen to. Similarly, his thoughts on business are inspiring. We talked about a great way to support Teach Me To Code. And that is by purchasing his videos and book here. I don't usually promote products, but I think this one is a terrific one and I hate asking for money in return for nothing, so in this case you get some great videos and a book! Download this episode

So, between family stuff, more work than I can realistically handle, and being sick, I'm afraid I fell behind on the podcast. However, not to worry, I have big plans for 2011 including dedicating a full day to getting all of the podcasts, screencasts, blog posts, and other stuff out the door and into your hands. So, if you're looking for details or an explanation, then listen to this episode. Download this Episode

Go checkout our sponsors New Relic and Chargify. Feel free to leave feedback at (801)753-8279 or chuck@teachmetocode. You can also reach me on twitter at http://twitter.com/cmaxw. Our guest this week is Dave Hoover. He's a member of the Software Craftsmanship movement. He's the Chief Craftsman at Obtiva. He's also written Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman The most exciting part, was learning about apprenticeship from the guy who wrote the book. Dave got started by reading Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative. He also mentioned a few people that he considered masters: Fred George Uncle Bob Martin Corey Haines There's some great advice on figure out where you are and determining where you can get to and how.

There are a lot of opinions about what makes code readable. This was a short discussion of a few of them. I also recommend checking out these links. What is Code Readability? How to write readable code? 5 Tips to improve your code readability. Stack Overflow discussion on Implementing Readable Code Download this Episode

Andy Hunt is the author or co-author of several programming books including: The Pragmatic Programmer Programming Ruby (the Pickaxe book) Pragmatic Unit testing in C# with Nunit Practices of an Agile Developer Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware He's also one of the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto. Andy is a great person to talk about regarding Agile Development. Here are some things he says you need to become agile and where to start: Do a little of the right things all the time You'll be the expert on the project at the end of the project. Defer important decisions until you understand the problem. Stand up meetings Set ground rules Make sure you have a stable build environment and version control Unit Tests Continuous Integration Code Reviews/Pair Programming - Check the code Involve the Customer Produce something every 1-4 weeks Retrospectives - Get Feedback Download this Episode

Thank you guys so much for helping me make it to RubyConf this year. It was a great experience. I was exposed to a lot of new technologies that I'm anxious to help you figure out. I'd heard about some of these, but here is a list of some of them: mustache.js gdb memprof Ruby 1.9.2 and Ruby 2.0 Rite (Ruby Lite) which was announced as an embedded systems version of Ruby Metric Fu Hotspots Citrus I also ran into some familiar voices (from interviews) and new voices (that will be interviewed) including: David Heinemeier Hansson Yehuda Katz James Edward Gray II Wayne Seguin Michael Hartl Chad Fowler Dave Thomas Finally, I'd like to thank the handful of people who came up to me and told me how much they enjoy the podcast and screencast. It's great to talk to you guys. You inspire me to do better. Download this Episode

Show notes are forthcoming. Download this episode

In this podcast episode, I discuss writing unit tests vs integration tests and why you need both. Here's the link to Ben Mabey's talk on Cucumber. You can also find out more about Cucumber in the Screencasts and at cukes.info Download this Episode

This week's interview with Peter Cooper was terrific! He talked a lot about entrepreurship and social media. A few sites that he has set up are: Ruby Inside Ruby Weekly Coder.io Rails Inside Ruby Flow You can also find out more about him by going to peterc.org and twitter.com/peterc Download this episode