Guest: Daniel P. Clark

This week on My Ruby Story, Chuck talks with Daniel Clark who is a Ruby and Rust enthusiast, blogger, and freelancer. Daniel and Chuck talk about Daniel’s background, and his past/current projects. Check out today’s episode!

0.00 – Advertisement – GET A CODER JOB!

0:58 – Guest: Hi!

1:01 – Chuck: Introduce yourself real quick, please, and what are you known for?

1:08 – Guest: My blog posts – I write about about Ruby. I have a few projects that are well known: Faster Path among others. 

1:35 – Chuck: We had you on a past episode, 368 Ruby Rogues. Where do you write?

1:49 – Guest: I am a contractor and I write blog posts for them.

1:58 – Chuck: Let’s talk about you! How did you get into programming?

2:07 – Guest: My dad is a programmer and before 5th grade I got a computer and no Internet. I tried things to see how things worked. I wrote from the top down – recipe style. I really enjoyed programming back then. Later in life, Java was the next big thing and for me to get into it was harder. I got a book and figured out how to compile it. I stopped programming when I wrote HELLO WORLD! I came across Python at some time. At the same style I wrote my Q basic programs, things were more functional. That’s my entry into programming.

4:05 – Chuck: What got you into Python?

4:13 – Guest: The syntax in Java hurt in writing. With Python when I first started out it felt like it wasn’t asking me more than what I needed to do. It was very simple for me.

4:38 – Chuck: What did you build with Python?

4:43 – Guest: Connect 4 in Python and command line tools. Simple things. I wrote one time a sales website in Django with Python and use with Google Pay. I wrote it and it got to launch point and then I was done.

5:30 – Chuck: How Did you get into Ruby?

5:35 – Guest: A childhood friend who loved Pearl and at the time I loved Python. We would friendly argue about which one was better. He talked to companies for me, and he edified my abilities in their eyes. I’ve been with Ruby since and I have a passion with it.

7:02 – Chuck: Why Ruby?

7:06 – Guest: With Python I never learned object oriented design and I never got into a community with Python. I didn’t connect with a broader community. I was constantly learning new things with Ruby. I connected a lot with people and shared with them the things that I’ve learned.

8:11 – Chuck: What have you done in Ruby?

8:15 – Guest: Almost you name it – I haven’t done graphics with gaming. I have done tons with the web side of things. I’ve done command line game and flashcards for learning language characters. That specific project was one of my favorite projects. I designed an entire...

9:14 – Chuck: Model view graphics for command line - how does that work?

9:23 – Guest: Rails has model view controller I followed that same schema.

10:00 – Chuck: Is it open source somewhere?

10:05 – Guest: Yes. Language Cards through GitHub. There are 2 languages that you can start learning with.

10:28 – Chuck: Performance on Ruby – how did you get into that angle?

10:51 – Guest: I agreed to work with shares in a startup company and I worked a year on it. It was heavy on features. One thing I noticed was that the load time for the front page was unacceptable (loading time). I wanted to figure out where the bottlenecks were. I wrote my first bit of code and linked it up with Ruby and I got my website to run 30% faster. Seeing that – that was exciting. It seemed like I accomplished something and I wanted to share it with the community. It drew a lot of attention. I thought it was a cool novel idea and I became well known for it. I put more time into it b/c I wanted it to look better since it got so much attention. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve dove into the C code b/c I am improving the libraries.

13:39 – Chuck: Getting those C libraries up?

13:45 – Guest: That is the most recent thing I am working with. My project RU RU hasn’t been worked on in a while, so I created an official fork for it – you can call it: RUTIE. So much work has been put into it. I am very excited about this project. It’s very active right now.

14:56 – Chuck: How do people find you online?

15:05 – Guest: GitHub, my website, and Twitter!

15:27 – Chuck: What if people want to contract you?

15:34 – Guest: Check out my résumé, which will show my areas of expertise. They can find ways to reach me, and my contact information is mentioned there. I like working on full-stack Ruby and/or Rust and anything performance.

16:16 – Advertisement – Fresh Books!

Daniel

Chuck