How an Introduction to Ruby on Rails Class Saved My (Work) Life

Today’s guest post is by Joshua Rose, one of the students in our first Introduction to Ruby on Rails training class:

There are things that we can’t change about ourselves. I was born a geek,
always have been, always will be.

I hacked on BASIC as a kid, studied computer science for a few years
at Miami University then landed my first programming job around
10 years ago doing visual basic. My career in the corporate world advanced from software developer to architect.

However, I was terribly unhappy with the state of my career.
I felt like my work was more about meetings and politics than actually building
great things.

I had heard about Ruby on Rails, but being a career long .NET programmer, my initial
attempts to explore it had been filled with command lines and text editor wars.

I came to Gaslight’s Cincinnati Rails Day and met some amazing people. There is a
welcoming atmosphere and energy in the local Ruby community. Being a career corporate
programmer, I had never experienced such a community of passionate people before.

I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Rails programmer, but I knew I wanted to spend more
time around these people. I was skeptical if enrolling in the Introduction to Ruby on Rails class
would have any value for someone like me.

But I decided to sign up to spend 12 Saturdays with instructors Jim Anders and Ben Stafford, as well as a group of amazing students ranging from other career long developers to talented artists and
manufacturing workers making time for the class around their 60 hour work weeks.

The course at Gaslight involved lectures from two very talented real world Rails developers,
question and answer time, and pairing up with another student.

I can’t stress how valuable the course material was; learning computer science at the
university level unfortunately doesn’t necessarily translate into real life. In the course,
we all built an application together and were given the opportunity to build a
passion project.

During the course, I learned not only techniques that could only be learned from Rails veterans,
but I also learned the joy of helping out fellow classmates. Perhaps in the future I’ll be able
to give back by teaching a round of courses.

Because of my time in the class, I had the opportunity to interview for a position at
ChoreMonster, and now I work with instructor Ben Stafford every day. Gone are the days
of sitting in meetings and dreading going to work. I work with some of the most creative
people in the city and look forward to going to work every morning to build great things.