Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea, episode 11. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and I'm your host. And today I interview Justin Weiss. Justin is a prolific Ruby developer and he's also writing a book about Rails called Practicing Rails. In the interview I decided to talk to Justin about why he chose Rails as the specific niche for his content publishing. And then we talk a little bit about why Justin likes Ruby so much. Justin also has a preview of his book available for free that we talk about at the end of the show. So I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed interviewing Justin. Welcome to the show, Justin. I'm really excited that you're here. And I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about where you came from and all the stuff that you're doing. It seems like you're doing a hundred different things. And before the show we were talking a little bit and I was asking him, hey, are you thinking? Are you thinking about doing any screencasts? And Justin was like, well, I've kind of got my plate full. So it seems like, you know, and that's true. You're putting out a hundred different things. So I'd love to hear kind of where you came from and why you got into development. Yeah, so in terms of getting into development, I mean, I've been running software, I guess, for as long as I can remember. Started with like, you know, in the Apple IIe designing levels and stuff for whatever game I was playing. And so this has always kind of been a passion of mine, something that I've been really interested in. But I guess for the actual professional development, it was just kind of what I guess people think of the standard road. You know, went to school for CS, ended up getting an internship, ended up getting a full-time job, and then kind of moving on from there. In terms of the writing and stuff, I'd always kind of wanted to start, I'd always wanted to start a blog and everything. I was a huge, huge fan of the Ruby blog ecosystem in like the 2007, 2008-ish. And whenever I'd started, I just couldn't keep it going. And I could just never get a whole lot of interest in what I was writing. And so I'd have like these kind of fits and starts, which I guess is fairly common from what I've heard and people I've talked to. Sure, yeah. And so for anyone who hasn't visited Justin's blog, it is located at, let me make sure I get this right, justinweiss.com, which we'll put in the show notes. Justin's been writing for, in your year in review for 2014, you said you've basically been writing for about a year, right? Yep. And you've had over a thousand people subscribe to your newsletter? Yeah, yeah. That's huge. Absolutely huge. Yeah, I mean, the best part of this whole thing has just been the, you know, the people I've been able to reach. I've been able to talk to the conversations I've had, that kind of thing through email. So I'm really happy about that. In fact, the reason why Justin is even on the show today is because I've subscribed to his newsletter for quite a few weeks now. And I decided to just reach out to him because myself and a few people at work at Whiteboard, we're all kind of following Justin and the things that he's doing. So if you don't know what Justin has been up to, he's writing a book. He doesn't have an official release date, right? Right, right. Not quite yet, but it's soon. But Practicing Rails, which will definitely be in the show notes as well. He's writing a book. He's talked at a conference this year. He's writing a new blog post every week, which these blog posts are not just like, you know, hey, I've been thinking about this thing. It's like really well fleshed out, long, you know, long form blog posts. And he's also he did a guest spot on Ruby Tapas recently. Talk a little bit about that process and how you got involved with Avdi. So Avdi and I have kind of talked a little bit through Twitter and comments and things like that. And he, I don't know if you, you know, he just had a kid. And so he was trying to queue up a whole bunch of guest spots on Ruby Tapas so that, you know, he could spend some time with them. He could spend some time with the newborn and everything. That's great. And so he kind of reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in doing a guest spot. And it sounded like a lot of fun. I've been a huge fan of his for a long time. And so he kind of, you know, let me choose a topic. I ran it by him. He's like, yeah, just, you know, go ahead. It sounds like fun. So that was really cool. That was a great experience. I actually kind of approached it a similar way to how I approached, writing a blog where, you know, didn't outline, flush it out. I came up with some code samples and then went through the actual screencast recording. Sure. Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm also a subscriber to Ruby Tapas. So I haven't gotten to your episode yet. I'm trying to go one at a time. Yeah. Which there's a lot of content there. It's pretty impressive. It really is. But yeah, so all of this to kind of center around, the basic fact that you've chosen Rails as kind of like the only, the only constant in all of your work is Rails. I won't say the only constant. There's quality as a constant, I guess. But the kind of common factor is that you've chosen Rails. Can you talk a little bit about why? I know you mentioned the Ruby community, the blogging community. But can you explain a little bit more about why you chose Rails and, yeah, and why anybody else might would choose Rails if they're just starting out? Yeah. So I love Ruby. I've loved Ruby since the first time I saw it coming from the previous work that I'd done in Java and everything. It was just kind of a total breath of fresh air. I was like, everything I hated about Java was, you know, specifically addressed by the pleasure I felt like actually writing Ruby code. That's awesome. To the point where... The last time that I switched jobs, like one of the requirements on my list was like, I want to work someplace where I can work in Ruby professionally. So it's been something I've been interested in in a long time. One of the things that I've actually... I mean, I've also been really interested in the software development process and a lot of the books and things that were released in the early 2000s, the Kentback, the Martin Fowlers, all those types of things. And so... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. is going to understand it but if you can actually say it like this is what the code looks like beforehand this is what the code looks like after um it's a lot easier to to grasp and so um there's a lot of the stuff on on the blog that's not specific to rails but it uses rails as a uh like a a medium for transmitting like for actually transmitting abstract concepts and yeah that's i'm sorry i don't mean to cut you off go ahead oh no no no worries yeah it's uh and so that's that's kind of one of the reasons that uh almost everything is rails because that's what i like writing in and it's also a great way to try to communicate um topics through real examples yeah and and i've i've chosen ruby as well as kind of my my favorite language at least at the at this moment and it seems like ruby has this unique quality to it that it's like the acme language like it's the most basic version you know it's almost pseudo code feeling in some in some ways and so i feel like i can like you're saying explain these kind of more abstract concepts and most people from any language could approach ruby and say oh i know what that's doing because i've seen it before with the exception of of just a few things like maybe blocks are a little bit hard to understand but even those are like once you once you've heard a single explanation of it it's it's relatively easy to understand um not necessarily relatively easy to write but it's relatively easy to look at it and say oh yeah that that that reads like human language to me which i think is necessary for for a great programming language yeah absolutely and i mean one of the things that originally made me fall in love with the language was reading about how the the focus was absolutely like 100 on the programmer experience and if that made it to the point where i was like oh yeah i'm gonna write a book about so that the uh the interpreter was really really complicated or really difficult to understand or really slow or uh wasn't just up to par with the other uh with the other interpreters that were around at the time like you know so be it that because it was not written for a computer it's written for a human that was that just totally fit my my way of thinking yeah that's great uh and i've i've heard from some of the people who were there kind of in the early days is that like the idea that the concept behind ruby is what you were just saying which is um it's it's built for developer happiness not just developer productivity but developer happiness which is which is just such a unique concept you know so well awesome um so if you had kind of one takeaway i know now you're working in in more of a manager or managerial role than necessarily active development but if you had one takeaway to both beginners and seasoned professionals um who are just looking to become better developers you know the people who are listening to this show are taking you know 10 minutes out of their day to try to cram in something uh that can provide like actionable value to their career or uh whether it's a hobby or whatever what would you say if you just had you know 30 seconds um to to help these people become better developers um so the the agile process uh like it it fits everything it um the idea of learning what you're going like what you should be doing putting it into action as soon as humanly possible uh evaluating it so seeing like how this is better or worse than what you were doing before and then going back to the beginning and trying to like figuring out how the new stuff that you're learning um feeds back into that process to make you better uh that's kind of the process i've followed in my own like my own personal development process and i've been doing development in the code that i write in figuring out how like in figuring out hey is this a good place to refactor is this a bad place to refactor well like put the code side by side and see which one is better and uh and then use what you learn there to inform your future um your future refactorings and so that just kind of like read try evaluate loop has uh has just paid paid off hugely for me and uh has really a fast and uh and great way to uh to become better at whatever it is that you're doing that's awesome um i i couldn't agree more justin i really appreciate your time um and i appreciate the the insight that you've provided to people who are listening and and also man i just really appreciate the stuff that you're doing for people through through your writing and um if you're listening to this show you should also go and subscribe like right now uh at justinweiss.com again it'll be in the show notes if you don't know where the link is you can find it on the show notes are there at developer t.com and you'll find the show there uh in the most recent shows uh area it'll be at the top of the list and uh go and sign up for for justin's newsletter and uh also look out for practicing rails it's going to be coming out uh soonish according to justin so uh so look out for that and it'll definitely provide some value especially to people who are starting out uh learning and learning about how to use it and how to use it in a way that's rails justin again i really appreciate your time and uh if you have anything else um to say to the listeners now's the time all right well yeah i appreciate you having me um so with the uh the practicing rails i actually opened up um early access to it uh for a discount until it's it's actually like finished and everything uh and with that you can you can get the uh current copy which is um pretty much content complete uh just a few minor editing tweaks and that kind of thing that i want to make to it um and then you'll you'll get the uh the the the the the the the the the the you'll get the full copy um as uh after it's released great well i'll be doing that today then and uh hopefully the people listening to this will will also join me thanks so much justin yeah thank you for having me thanks so much for listening to developer t i hope you enjoyed this episode and the interview with justin make sure you drop over to justin's website at justinweiss.com sign up for his weekly newsletter where you get a ton of great content that's highly specific to and make sure that you also sign up for the preview of the book practicing rails thank you for listening once again i really appreciate all of the comments that you all have been sending me through email and on twitter if you want to reach out you can reach me at twitter at developer t or you can email me at developer t and gmail.com there's also a contact form on the website at developer t.com if you've been enjoying developer t and if you've enjoyed this episode of the book practicing rails please subscribe to the book if you think that it provides valuable content to developers just like you the best way that you can help other people find the show is to drop into itunes and leave a review and a rating thanks so much for listening and until next time enjoy your tea