Nathan Bellow is a Ruby software developer at Illuxi. They explore the premium benefits of membership, including exclusive access to Ruby Rogues without ads and personalized assistance with job hunts and deployment issues. They share their experiences in the Ruby community, from learning the language to securing professional opportunities. Join them as they discuss the value of personal connections at conferences and meetups, the impact of mentorship, and the crucial role of networking in career development. This promises to be an enlightening and thought-provoking episode for developers and enthusiasts alike.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:05]:
Hey. Welcome back to another episode of the Ruby Robes podcast. This week on our panel, we have Valentino Stoll.

Valentino Stoll [00:00:13]:
Hey now.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:14]:
I'm Charles Max Wood from Top Bend Devs. I'm gonna do a little personal thing here real quick. My contract work has slowed down. So if you need a contractor, let me know. Chuck@topend devs.com. Or if you're hiring full time, I might even consider that. So anyway, just email me. We have a special guest this week and that is Nathan Bello.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:33]:
Nathan, do you wanna introduce yourself?

Nathan Bellow [00:00:36]:
Hello. I'm Nathan Bello. I, I'm from Canada and Montreal, and I'm a software developer professionally since, 2 years now. And I work with, Ruby, Rails, and UJS.

Charles Max Wood [00:00:53]:
Very cool. Yeah. Just a little side note. My grandparents met in Montreal. So yeah. Neither of them are from Montreal. They didn't live there very long. Anyway, very cool.

Charles Max Wood [00:01:08]:
So you're you're kind of new. Valentino introduced or invited you on the show. So I'll I'll let Valentino kind of give us some context and steer this one.

Valentino Stoll [00:01:17]:
Yeah. You know, I met Nathan at, one of the Ruby comps when it was virtual, and, you know, he he's, he's awesome. And, you know, I got to talking with him and, you know, we pair on occasion, on a couple open source things and, you know, I'm I'm just curious. I I wanted to kind of get, like, a, you know, how do people Ruby like, how do you get introduced to the community? You know, what is that experience like? And, Nathan graciously agreed to come on and kind of chat through his experience and, you know, what, you know, Ruby local conferences are like. I'm always curious. I see some great presentations at Montreal RB. And, you know, I'm I just wanted to start a little dialogue with what, you know, with kind of, like, what new Ruby experience is like and how we can maybe improve it or, you know, help in any way, as community members. So, you know, I'm happy to have you here, Nathan.

Valentino Stoll [00:02:26]:
And, you know, is it do you wanna give a little intro maybe, to how what your first Ruby experience was like even? Like, how did you how did you get involved, you know, in this direction?

Nathan Bellow [00:02:40]:
Absolutely. So, as far as software development, I was, very into it since a long time ago when I was a kid. And,

Charles Max Wood [00:02:52]:
was that in Montreal? You grew up there?

Nathan Bellow [00:02:55]:
No. So I'm originally from Brazil, but I grew up in Okay. Most of my school was in France. I lived 10 years in France. And when I was 12, there were there were some extra curriculum at school, which was you could choose different things, but there were one thing that was about, programming. So I was very interested. So I did that. I don't remember which language I learned.

Nathan Bellow [00:03:23]:
I think it was PHP, but it was a long time ago. But on my mind, I always knew I did the the path I want to take. I didn't know it was a career or anything before. So after high school, I, start to look into, universities. So I take the, Yeah. So I was in France end of high school, then I go to university in Montreal. So I I learned all these languages, c, JavaScript, Java. And I I really liked more the front end at that time.

Nathan Bellow [00:04:05]:
I I didn't like, but at some point, I wanted to specialize in the back end, and, I did a program in Ruby, with open classrooms. I I don't know if you if you know this school. It's based in France. I think I'm one of the only one who have a bachelor's degree in Ruby. It doesn't exist anymore, but I have it. I can show you. And, yeah, so that's how I got introduced because I saw, I didn't know Ruby. I never heard about it.

Nathan Bellow [00:04:45]:
So I was like, this this is something I want to learn. Then I I researched a little bit and it seems that, oh, it's beginner friendly. It's easy to use, etcetera. That's what got me to choose that. So I I did a whole, program with, Ruby, and I had a great mentor. And, yeah, I think my program was so hard that in the beginning, I was doing some, like, just just Ruby. I was making some Ruby application, like a game, and then I had to write it in a object oriented way. Then I did the web application without rails.

Nathan Bellow [00:05:30]:
That was the hardest thing with the rack. You know? And Yeah. There were no documentation online. All documentation are with, rails or active record on some or some, DB stuff. So, yeah, that that was my most painful. But then when I transition with rails, I find it was kind of more easy. Just with the active record, I had a hard time, because my brain was all SQL. So that was, I think that was the hardest thing for me to adapt.

Nathan Bellow [00:06:10]:
But other than that, it it flew, it was, it was quite nice, the experience. So that's that's my, that's my introduction to to Ruby, basically.

Valentino Stoll [00:06:25]:
That's awesome. I I feel like Yeah. A lot of, Rails developers can relate to the pain of Rack. It's the the inner it's it's funny because, like, I feel like the design of the interface of Rack is really great. Right? Like, it's just like you have inputs that are standardized, and it requires outputs that are also standardized. Yep. But that's it. You don't really get anything else, and you have to do everything yourself, which which makes you love real so much more.

Valentino Stoll [00:06:57]:
So it's honestly sounds like a great program you you were part of to feel the pain so you can, know why you should love it,

Nathan Bellow [00:07:08]:
You know? Totally. Totally. And then, after that yeah?

Charles Max Wood [00:07:13]:
Yeah. I was gonna ask, but I think you were going there with your, after that is, is I was going to say, okay. So, you know, you learn rails, you, you did some of this, school work or however you wanna put it. You know, how do you how do you get from there to, okay, now I'm a professional. I'm getting paid to write code.

Nathan Bellow [00:07:34]:
Right. So through all this pain and I I, I did a a Rev app, like, it's not super complex, but I could deploy on, Amazon AWS. And then I felt, okay, let's let's look for a job. And so I start applying, and one thing I did was my resume was very, by was very, unique in I don't know. For me, it was a, I did, like, I I did some kind of design on it. I don't know if that's because of that or not, but I got a lot of, I got good results with my research. That was in, 2022, like January, February, And just in 1 month and a half, I I think I applied 30 of 50, and then I have I got, I got how many interviews? Six interviews and 2 offers. But the the trick for me was, I release I really sold myself, like, more than my skills.

Nathan Bellow [00:08:51]:
I I I really say, oh, this is who I am. This is my dream. This is, what I'm passionate about. I also mentioned my previous experience. Like, when I was, studying, I did some other job, like salesman, this kind of job. And, it helped me too because soft skills are very, is a is always a plus. So I think those things, helped me get my first job.

Charles Max Wood [00:09:25]:
Nice. So, what kind of what kind of work setup was it? You can tell us who the company was, but you don't have to. Some people aren't comfortable doing that, and that's fine. But, you know, kinda give us an idea of what that job looked like.

Nathan Bellow [00:09:41]:
Yeah. So this job is so at that time, it was Blue Remotes, and I was working with, a another Rails developer. And the beginning was, yeah, I was, like, kind of junior. Right? So the 1st 3 months, he was giving me task, but he he said to me I I was good. The first few months, I said, you you know okay. He he was, he was impressed, I think, because I went through through so much struggles with rack and everything. Yeah. So so, yeah, after the 3 months, I, I was assigned more, responsibilities, and I ended up leading the project after after 6 months.

Nathan Bellow [00:10:38]:
And I learned Vue. Js, on the way as well. I didn't know before, and that's part of the stack at work. And the company is, Elixir, based in Montreal.

Charles Max Wood [00:10:53]:
So, I like to get into kind of the okay. Somebody who's listening. Right? What what are they gonna get out of this? Right? And so I, I kind of see 2 groups. I think a lot of the people who listen to these shows are people who have been doing Ruby for a while. Right? So they're not but there's another group that listens because yeah, they've picked up Ruby somewhere, you know, they got exposed to it or, you know, at one point or another like you did and they want to get in. So I'm going to ask this question twice and I'm going to ask it once for the new people and once for the, people who are already kind of past the gate. So for people who are brand new, right? So let's say that I have a brother who wants to get into Ruby. I don't at the moment, You know? And, you know, he's he's interested and he wants to get in and be a professional Ruby or Ruby on Rails developer.

Charles Max Wood [00:11:49]:
What advice do you have just to kinda get through to that first job?

Nathan Bellow [00:11:56]:
Right. So, one one first thing, as far as the as far as the learning, I would say, if he goes to the Oding projects, don't know if you heard about it.

Charles Max Wood [00:12:10]:
Uh-huh. Oding project. Yep.

Nathan Bellow [00:12:13]:
Think, that's what I hear the most, but it's one of the most, helpful or one of the best, resource to to learn. And then after that, one one one thing I always thought was if you if you know other junior with you, you can do, like, a more ambitious project as 2 people, 2 people as all juniors, and you define all the what the app, will do, and it's kind of more complex. And you can use that for your portfolio and to apply for job. I think that's that's my advice.

Charles Max Wood [00:12:59]:
I I really like the find a group, mentality. Incidentally, I tell experienced people to find a group. And a lot of people complain they can't find a group. I'm actually starting one. You can find a rubygeniuses.com. And, you know, we get together where we can talk about Ruby. It's a new thing, so it's a small group right now. But anyway, yeah, it's so important to be able to find people who you can kind of bounce ideas off.

Charles Max Wood [00:13:25]:
We're about the same place as you and it can explain things to you and who you can work on projects with. So critical. Alright. So I'm going to ask the question again. So now now it's for people like me, right? So let's say I'm working at a company and they hire that brand new developer. Right? They, they hire Nathan 2 years ago. And so you're walking in the door and, yeah, you've done some Ruby with your other things, but this is your first job. What do I do to help you succeed?

Nathan Bellow [00:14:03]:
Yes. So I think one thing you must do is, Yeah. One thing you must do is, well, be be there for for the the junior. When you assign him really small tasks and you cannot feel how how long it takes. And I I my I I will I will say that let let him, struggle a little bit so he he he he learn a little better. And then once you you there to to help, it's gonna be much more beneficial. That that will be me, but I don't know if it's the same for other people. Yeah.

Nathan Bellow [00:14:59]:
That's that's kind of the the one of the first thing that come to mind. Also also doing pair programming, quite a lot. That that's that's essential, I think.

Charles Max Wood [00:15:13]:
Makes sense. Is there anything that they didn't do for you that you wish they had done?

Nathan Bellow [00:15:19]:
Yeah. There were no, pair programming.

Charles Max Wood [00:15:24]:
Yeah. I bet I bet that really helps. I I'll just chime in on that one as well. My first job, I was actually working with Nate Hopkins who used to be a host on the show. And, I was I was like brand new. And my rails experience was at my previous job, I'd been running the tech support department. Right? So my job was actually to answer the phones, answer emails and manage all the other people that answered the phones and the emails, but they wouldn't spend money on a system that w you know, a ticketing system. And so I built it in rails and that, that was my experience.

Charles Max Wood [00:16:02]:
Right? And so I come into this next job and yeah. I probably spent half of my time pairing with Nate. And I mean, it's it's just immeasurable how much stuff I picked up from that. I mean, there there's just no way to know. And so, yeah, I I definitely feel that. I mean, I I still remember. I mean, we're what? What? 8 no? 17 years later or something like that? And, yeah, it I still look back on it. 18 years.

Charles Max Wood [00:16:32]:
It's been 18 years. And, and, you know, it still was a highly formative thing that that really helped me out.

Valentino Stoll [00:16:40]:
Yeah. Heavy plus one there. My my first Real Rails gig was, at a small consultancy, and I must have spent the 1st 6 months just pairing with people.

Charles Max Wood [00:16:51]:
Yep.

Valentino Stoll [00:16:53]:
And, like, it's invaluable. Yeah. Like,

Charles Max Wood [00:16:56]:
you pick up stuff that nobody would think to teach you.

Valentino Stoll [00:17:02]:
Yep. Yeah, I hadn't tested at all. And I think I learned how to test in Ruby by pair programming with people.

Nathan Bellow [00:17:10]:
Yep.

Valentino Stoll [00:17:11]:
You know, you you do things you learn how to do things that you wouldn't normally want to do because of the, you know, fear of the unknown. Right? Where Yep. You know, you don't know how to do it. So why would you, like, necessarily, like, reach for it? Right? You wouldn't even think to reach for it.

Charles Max Wood [00:17:30]:
Yep. Absolutely. Why did you do that? That's such a useful tool when you're they're programming. Nathan, your background with like the kind of fuzzed out white. It makes me think of all the movies when someone goes to heaven. So, you know, is Montreal heaven? Yeah. There we go.

Nathan Bellow [00:17:49]:
Yes. It's heaven.

Charles Max Wood [00:17:52]:
Go ahead, Valentino.

Valentino Stoll [00:17:55]:
I was gonna say adding on to, what what you were talking about, but, you know, asking the same question multiple ways. I feel like there's a third way here too in the, you know, kind of like the more experienced developers that are looking to take on more mentorship or maybe more managerial positions or or something like that. You know, like, how is there any any ways that I could have been more helpful for, like, in that process of either finding a mentor or, like, was there something that did help you, like, kind of, like, because of of mentorship of somebody? You know what I mean?

Nathan Bellow [00:18:40]:
Yes. So for me, one of the first thing that helped me, is stole the 1st Ruby, Friend. I think it's still up. It's it's a website where you can sign up to either become a mentor or any, junior Rubyist and or you can sign up to be a mentee. So I I did that and I was, mentored by for for 6 months by, former Shopify, employee. And it was very a great experience. I learned a lot from him. And another thing is, if you if we go on the Wells comp or Ruby comp, you can also match naturally.

Nathan Bellow [00:19:33]:
You know? You can, find a mentor that way. And, yeah, I, but I think, first would be funny. He's really great. And, also, I'm, I'm recently a member of, agency of learning. I I don't know if you heard of of it. It's, it's basically it's, it's kind of a Ruby shop of, self motivated, early career developers. So the the way it's done is, we hire by peers. So 1 junior, and there is also some seniors that lead the project that they're that are there for mentoring.

Nathan Bellow [00:20:16]:
And that's a really great group to really, get ahead. Because we are a group, we can also pair with each other between junior, between senior or mid. And that's, I think that's a great group if you want to, advance in your managerial skills, mentoring skills. And as a junior, well, it's a great group where you can progress or learn more with your career. So I think, yeah, that's that's a great, place.

Valentino Stoll [00:20:56]:
Yeah. That's great.

Charles Max Wood [00:20:57]:
I hadn't heard of that one.

Valentino Stoll [00:20:58]:
Yes. What's been, your favorite project you've worked on?

Nathan Bellow [00:21:01]:
Yeah. The so the the was that, project called the pair app. So, basically, it's an application where where it's for pairing or anything that goes within a soft software development environment. Like, there is, you can, put your stand up notes there and, you know, as underly, she can see all the stand up notes of everyone if if anyone is is stuck. So it's kind of async, so it's great. And there is other feature for hiring as well, hiring, people. And, yeah, there were other feature, but on top of my head, that that's the 2 things, that was very interesting. And, also, we we do some open source work, like, with, Ruby for good.

Nathan Bellow [00:22:01]:
I've been contributing to, the CASA project. So, yeah, it's very interesting. So I, yeah, I I I learn every day when I'm pairing with even with another junior, sometimes he learn he learn something I don't know. Yeah. It's I mean

Valentino Stoll [00:22:23]:
That's awesome. I'm interested to know, like, how do you start? First, how do you know to get involved in these these things? Right? And like, how do you get involved? Like, what what is the process for that look like? Is it, like, pretty straightforward? Like, is there a learning curve? You know, is there is there some takeaways that you can, like, suggest people, like, have things set up to make this process easier?

Nathan Bellow [00:22:50]:
Right. So one of the one of the first things to get away of this kind of opportunities for me is is social media, LinkedIn, and, Twitter x. That that's where I I get news. Like

Charles Max Wood [00:23:09]:
Can I can I ask real quick? So you mentioned LinkedIn and Twitter and they're kind of used differently. Are there specific groups that you found in LinkedIn or specific, Twitter accounts? I I think I saw groups in Twitter now too. But yeah. Where where are you looking? Are you yeah.

Nathan Bellow [00:23:26]:
Yeah. So for for LinkedIn, there is some, Ruby Groups. I think they're called, I mean, if you go to groups, you type Ruby on Wells. You you can find yeah. I'm on, like, 4 groups, like one called Ruby's, 1's 5,000 members, Ruby on Wells. Yeah. Ruby. The other ones, just called Ruby on Wells.

Nathan Bellow [00:23:49]:
And yeah. So I get a lot of, like, programming tips or something going on. And yeah. And also I add people on LinkedIn that are rupees, so I I get my feed is really, like, great for me. Like, I I I get Ruby related posts a lot. And for Twitter, I I I guess I have I'm in some group big groups on Twitter, but I've never really checked. It's there, but I I never I never go on there. I just go on the for you page, and I get I get some, Ruby feeds.

Nathan Bellow [00:24:35]:
And I guess you should follow, like, the Ruby page or whatever, and you you press like on any Ruby thing, and then the algorithm will show you will show you all the, automatically. And yeah. So that's the first thing. And then for specifically the agency of learning, so it's, we are hiring in batch. So there were 1 batch that was, I don't know when it was, but me, I got, like, hired on November, I think. And, yeah, I I don't know when the next one will be, but anyone can apply, like, if you're a senior or junior, and the process is quite easy. Just apply, and once you're you're there, you're a member, then, you we have a a private Discord channel where you can post, oh, I want to pair or who is available to pair. Yeah.

Nathan Bellow [00:25:46]:
Usually, if there is a space project we have, there is a a leads that's that's we have, like, a a notion where all the project requirements are there. And we can also we are free to also add to the Notion, like, the a specific feature. We can, write design documents. So, yeah, it's really great. You can really expand your skill in every way, not just, program.

Charles Max Wood [00:26:21]:
Very awesome. I'm gonna kinda take us on a little bit. So you're you've been programming now for a couple of years, and, it seems like I run across people fairly often who they get into their first or maybe their second development job where they're still kind of new and they're kind of being brought up and taught how to do what they do. And then what happens is they kind of wind up feeling a little stuck, right? Where it's okay. I've learned everything I'm going to learn here. Or, you know what? They're never gonna promote me because I'm always gonna be the newbie. Or, you know, I I just wanna try something different. Or maybe there's something structural, cultural at the company and makes them want to think they want to move on, but they don't feel like they can.

Charles Max Wood [00:27:10]:
Right. They don't feel like they can apply. They don't feel like there's an opportunity out there, or they don't even know how to find that next gig. And so I'm curious, how did you move from your first job where you were there for, like, 6 months and then moved on? How did you move from there to wherever you're at now?

Nathan Bellow [00:27:28]:
Yeah. Actually, the my first job, I I didn't move. I I'm still in. It's just that I Okay. I got, kind of promoted. But, yeah, I'm still on the same, but I'm kind of in this in that same, same, thing you you just described. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of weird, position. But I would say, one thing I do that's that's essential, I think, so far is I just, network because if I just apply to, a job like that, I don't know, it's it's gonna be like, is, maybe too, inexperienced or something or but if I talk to people, maybe they can see, okay.

Nathan Bellow [00:28:31]:
I know this. I know that. I could get, some opportunities, just just by talking. Mhmm. But if I, just go cold approach, it's harder.

Charles Max Wood [00:28:45]:
It's a lot harder. The cold approach is a lot harder.

Valentino Stoll [00:28:48]:
I think you brought up a good point though of, like, I feel like early on in your career, you think that you need to make this impression, like, you know everything, or at least know enough where, like, you know, you can do everything by yourself. And, you know, I feel like people hiring

Charles Max Wood [00:29:09]:
Wait. That goes away?

Valentino Stoll [00:29:11]:
I feel like people hiring don't wanna know that you can do everything. Right? Like, they, you know, we wanna know that you can't. Right? Like and that you're eager to learn what those things are. And I I know personally, like, I still have this problem too, like, of trying to, you know, overcompensate for not knowing everything because I wanna know everything, you know. And this is like a, you know, it never breaks in software. Right? Like, you're never gonna break free of this notion. Right. But I feel like you make a good point is like, you know, you don't necessarily have to know all of it, but having that conversation will highlight the things that you do know, right, in a networking setting.

Valentino Stoll [00:29:54]:
And, I feel like that's the most important part of, like, finding your gig because it'll align what your skill sets are and where it's going with what people need, rather than just trying to say that you know everything or trying to, you know, make it seem like it's something you're not I feel like oftentimes people get placed improperly from just trying to, you know, say that, you know, you could do it all. I know I've definitely gotten jobs, you know, where I've been like, oh, man. I don't wanna be doing this. You know. And it's like, I I told him I could do it, though. You know? Yeah. So, like, I think setting expectations and definitely networking like that. Yeah.

Valentino Stoll [00:30:40]:
I completely hear you on that. I'm curious. I wanted to to shift the the conversation a little bit here, toward, like, conferences and maybe meetups and things like that because I I'm interested to know kind of, like, your insight on where, you know, what your opinions are on both, like, the the Ruby conferences, rails conferences, and maybe even like the local ones. Right? Like, you mentioned, you know, attending Montreal RB. You know, what what value did you see out of each of those? Right? Like, did you see that one, attending one of the events was better than the other? Like, was it important the timing in your career and what you knew for each event? You know? Can you give us a a little insight on that?

Nathan Bellow [00:31:33]:
Yes. So, yeah, I think one of the main value I get from this is friendship. That's number 1. I, I get to know people and I try to like, every time, for example, I go to Montreal dot RB. And then once we add each other on LinkedIn or whatever, I try to keep a conversation after. And

Charles Max Wood [00:32:01]:
This is the meetup. Right? Montreal or

Nathan Bellow [00:32:03]:
Yeah. For the meetup. And I tried to even for, I think, Ruby or, I I did the the same. Like, oh, nice to meet you. It was nice to see you. Blah blah blah. Yeah. So that's one of the first value, but, of course, I learned a lot from the press presentation, and that's that's really great.

Nathan Bellow [00:32:30]:
I learned more about the philosophy of the framework or the language and something I never knew was possible. That's that's really great. But I think the number one is really, the friendship I make and, like, just an example, on Montreal at RB. I, so okay. I met for some friends and then, like, 7 months after, I get the opportunity, like, like a small opportunity. It was an app. I had to have debug, and I got paid for, like, 3 hour work or whatever. So, you know, that's that's great.

Nathan Bellow [00:33:14]:
And I never expected it's just because I I knew someone and knew me.

Valentino Stoll [00:33:20]:
That's awesome. And so I'm curious, like, were there were there any barriers to entry for for either? Like, did you find Like, was it was it easy to attend as an example, RubyConf or RailsConf, whichever you you did attend? Was was it easy to do? And, like, was it did you find it difficult to meet people or or connect? You know, what was that like?

Nathan Bellow [00:33:47]:
Yeah. Actually, for the, res comp, I was, I got a free sponsorship ticket. I I just again, Twitter. Right? I I saw someone was offering.

Charles Max Wood [00:34:04]:
I like that they

Nathan Bellow [00:34:04]:
do that.

Valentino Stoll [00:34:05]:
That's awesome. Yeah.

Nathan Bellow [00:34:08]:
But I just message, hey. Like, is that that person was offering for, early career junior. And so I was, hey. I'm new. Can you, offer me a ticket? And he offered me no problem. So that, that was, very nice. And yeah. And that that was the online, that one, 22.

Nathan Bellow [00:34:36]:
So it it kind of push you to to meet people through that, networking thing online. As for as for the I I didn't attend yet any, like, in person. Maybe I would go to Wells World, She's in Canada, so I have to go.

Charles Max Wood [00:35:00]:
Uh-huh. Yeah. It's in Toronto.

Nathan Bellow [00:35:03]:
And, we'll we'll

Charles Max Wood [00:35:05]:
we'll go make friends there in person.

Nathan Bellow [00:35:08]:
Yes. Absolutely. And as far as Montreal at RB, I the first time, I think it kind of feels you you as a beginner, maybe you can feel, intimidated or, like, everyone is so expert, you know, but I I said no no one is, judging or anything. Everyone's welcoming, so I yeah. It's fine. For me, I don't have I don't have this kind of fears. So I just go, ah, let's make friends. And, yeah.

Nathan Bellow [00:35:54]:
But, yeah, it goes through my mind like, that's so that's so expert. How can I contribute to that conversation? So

Valentino Stoll [00:36:04]:
you can

Nathan Bellow [00:36:04]:
do that for sure.

Charles Max Wood [00:36:05]:
Yeah.

Valentino Stoll [00:36:05]:
I I feel that pain. I remember my first, honestly, I've only ever been to 1 Rails comp, but it was early in my career. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:36:16]:
I've spoken at it at least 2 or 3 times.

Valentino Stoll [00:36:19]:
I wanna say 2012, or 11. It was when it was in, Baltimore. No.

Charles Max Wood [00:36:24]:
I didn't go to that one.

Valentino Stoll [00:36:26]:
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I I just remember going and being just like, like you said, very overwhelmed with, you know, not being able to contribute to any conversation or what was happening. And, you know, as I've as I've grown to know the community more, I feel like it's, you know, it's more welcoming than it appears on the surface. And I know that the conference has changed a lot, and they're a lot more welcoming to newcomers. And, I feel like when they ask it, you know, they always ask at the conference, hey, who's new? Who's this first time? Right? And there's so many with hands now. And that's so great. Yeah.

Valentino Stoll [00:37:03]:
So I'm kind of excited to go to conference again now. Alright. And, just see how it's changed and meet some newcomers. Right? Like, make them feel welcome. And, you know, but I do feel your pain. You know? How do you contribute to the the conversations? And, really, the answer is, like, just just talk about it. Talk about what you know or what you wanna know, and people are they really love to, you know, talk about what what, you know, what's happening. And to be honest, it's really great if you do know, you know, all these things and, you know, that they've learned over the years.

Valentino Stoll [00:37:40]:
It's like a great way to, like, break it down in a simple ways. Right? Like, that's one of the best ways to learn it better is to be able to say it in simple terms. Right? Like, sure, chat gbd can do so much. Right? But, you know, doing it on your own, you know, definitely it helps your brain, like, learn it even more for sure. But I'm curious, like, did did the conference offer anything specifically that you remember that where you were like, oh, yeah. I I've gotta come back to a conference for this.

Nathan Bellow [00:38:13]:
Yeah. So definitely the the WestCon, that I attended was, like, really great, and I I really want to meet more people and learn more. I, the those conferences from 2023, I watched online, but, you know, I I watched the content online, but it's really not the same. I learned the content for sure, but, that that pushed me to to to go back and meet more people and learn more from people and yeah. Like, just watching a YouTube conference is is really not the same.

Valentino Stoll [00:39:00]:
Yeah. I'll admit I remember attending rails comp. There was lightning talks, which I had never heard about before. But basically, anybody can get on stage and just, like, give like a 1 to 2 minute, like, presentation of whatever they want. Right? And it's great. I, you know, but, I'll I'll just small takeaways from that, like, this guy Corey Hanes. He's he used to be very avid.

Charles Max Wood [00:39:31]:
Talked to Corey in years.

Valentino Stoll [00:39:32]:
Oh, man. He's great. He has the 4 simple rules of design, which are like, great book if you if you ever wanna read that. But he get he came up on stage and, well, you know, just, like, ran his entire test suite with with, like, thousands of tests and was and it, like, ran in in, like, a second or 2. And it was just like he's just like, you know, you don't have to, your test suite doesn't have to take minutes to run. And and then that was Oh, yeah. At the stage. Right?

Nathan Bellow [00:40:04]:
That was great. And

Valentino Stoll [00:40:05]:
it eventually became a thing, like, he did some follow-up, on it. But I I never forget, like, oh, what did he do? Yeah. Like, and, you know, his his key thing was, well, you don't load the entire rails application for every test file.

Charles Max Wood [00:40:19]:
Right.

Valentino Stoll [00:40:20]:
Which has its pros and cons, but, like

Charles Max Wood [00:40:22]:
You don't hit the database You don't need to.

Valentino Stoll [00:40:24]:
Right. So many things. Right? But it definitely was a key takeaway for me, and even still to this day, I think about it, like, you know, of thinking more about why the things are happening. Right? And, like, I feel like when you get started with, like, a framework in general, like reels, it's easy to, like, overlook the questions to ask because it does so many things for you behind the scenes. Right? And that really opened up my mind. Oh, like, I could just ask this question and, like, figure it out. Like, and that was definitely, like, a key takeaway for me, from from just a lightning talk. Right? For 2 minutes.

Nathan Bellow [00:40:59]:
Right.

Valentino Stoll [00:40:59]:
But so I'm curious now, like, for, like, the smaller meetups, that's got, like, a much more personal setting. You know, do you find, like, that you get more specific content? Like, what what value differentiating from, like, a conference, would you say that, like, something like a local meetup offers that maybe you wouldn't get from a conference?

Nathan Bellow [00:41:26]:
Yeah. I I think, local meetup, you can always well, first of all, one one of the first thing, you can always meet again with someone, like, in a cafe or something. Like, for example, I I, I made friends with a CTO of one, small start startup. And one time, I had some question with for him. So we went to eat in a cafe, and that that was great. So that's one thing. And, the other thing, you mentioned, lightning, talks. Sometimes, we do, gem, I I forgot the the the naming of it, but it's like, like, basically, you have to share a gem that was useful to you.

Nathan Bellow [00:42:23]:
Oh, okay. So I

Charles Max Wood [00:42:24]:
Kinda like our page.

Nathan Bellow [00:42:27]:
Yeah. So then everyone can share. Right? So sometimes they were even someone that just came out of a boot camp, we got to present, what's the name, form. You know, that, on rails, for the form, form with or I I don't I don't know the name. I don't know the name. Yeah. That's fine. So so he he got to present that gem and and then me, I, I think I don't remember what I, yeah, I shared a gem where, it lets you find the n plus one queries.

Nathan Bellow [00:43:10]:
So that that was, interesting. So but the other times I sometimes I feel like I don't know, I don't want to share anything. I'm scared. I'm scared. I don't know what to answer the question. So yeah. But that that's that's, advantage where you can have a opportunity to share something even if you are brand new.

Charles Max Wood [00:43:40]:
Yeah. I I wanna just chime in on that for a second because, yeah, I talk to new people and they're like, I don't have anything to share that everybody doesn't already know. And when I was pretty new to the, my development career, I would go to the, Utah, Ruby meetup. And it was funny because we had one in Utah county, one in Salt Lake county, one in downtown. Like there was one up in, Cash County anyway. So you could go to 4 or 5 of them in the state, but, I would go and especially at the Salt Lake one, they usually have a short talk on something that was pretty fundamental. And so, a primer. And so I I would do the primers like every other month, even though I was new.

Charles Max Wood [00:44:24]:
And what was funny was that I would go I would cover it thoroughly enough to where there was always something in there. And and it wasn't because I was trying to, it was just, you know, I had 5 minutes and sort of fill the 5 minutes. I covered everything about strings or whatever I was talking about, you know, or, you know, the, the HT one of the HTTP, let's say, HTTP party, but I would cover something and I'd have one of the senior guys come up afterward and say, I didn't know it did that. And, the other thing is, is that in order to prepare it, be able to speak to it for 5 minutes, I had to really learn it. And so if you're new and you're going to a meetup, volunteer to speak, you know, just raise your hand. I mean, even if you raise your hand and you say, hey, look, I'm going to talk about the device, Jim, and I'm going to cover it for 5 minutes. That's all I have. That's all I can manage to do.

Charles Max Wood [00:45:14]:
They will take you because the, the meetup organizers is appreciate it because then they don't have to go find somebody to fill time. They don't have to fill the time and you you'll learn something. And I promise there are gonna be people there who are going. I didn't know that that was even a thing.

Nathan Bellow [00:45:31]:
That's a really great, tip actually.

Valentino Stoll [00:45:35]:
Yeah. As I I helped run a very small Ruby, meetup in, in Pennsylvania, for the Lehigh Valley. And, I I think we had, like, maybe 2 people come a night or sometimes 3. And we run it, either way, it was with work and, you know, people would come and, like, you would get requests every once in a while of, like, as an example, like, I mean, this isn't somebody new, but it was, it wasn't even Ruby. It was, that there's a what power Spotify was, the Echo Nest. And this, like, lead developer that, like, made the Echo Nest, like, came in and gave a presentation on how, like, math works with music really great, and you can, like, extract things from sound. And it was, like, wild. And so, like, you know, like, but as an organizer, you're like, yeah.

Valentino Stoll [00:46:35]:
Like, sure. It's not about Ruby. Right? It's not, you know, it wasn't anything I knew about. But, like, you know, it was great. Like, we had actually, like, a lot of people show up that we weren't expecting, for that night. And, we would didn't have to think about the content and, like, yeah, it's like, for sure, like, you know, if if you wanna give a talk or give provide any, like, content, you know, for a meeting, it is just super helpful to have that, like, come to you as a maintainer. Right? Like

Nathan Bellow [00:47:11]:
That's right. Well, I I didn't, I thought, this way, but, actually, it's it's really great. We like, you said, we prepared something, like, device or just something everyone know, but if you present very well, that's that's gonna be great for the for everyone, actually.

Charles Max Wood [00:47:34]:
Yep.

Nathan Bellow [00:47:36]:
I'm gonna do that next time.

Charles Max Wood [00:47:38]:
Good deal. Do it. Do it. It's awesome. It's also if you wanna speak at conferences, it's a really good way to get your foot in the door. Right? Even if you don't know if you want to, but, hey, that might be interesting. I wanna try it. It's a good way to figure out if if it's kind of a thing that you'll enjoy.

Charles Max Wood [00:47:54]:
So, all right. Well, we're kind of getting toward, the hour. So I'm, I'm curious before we do our picks, Nathan, if people wanna connect with you on LinkedIn and Twitter or anywhere else, how do they find you online?

Nathan Bellow [00:48:10]:
Yes. So, I have a website. It's called, natesbell. So dot c a. So natebell, b e l l dot c a. And LinkedIn, I'm Nathan Bellow. So Nathan, and Bellow is b e l l o w. Uh-huh.

Nathan Bellow [00:48:31]:
And Twitter is, mattblow. Twitter.com.uh, slash natbloatbl0.

Charles Max Wood [00:48:42]:
Awesome. Alright. Well, let's do some picks. Valentino, you wanna do us some picks?

Valentino Stoll [00:48:51]:
Sure. Yeah. In case you haven't picked up yet, on all my ramblings, I'm very much into AI at this point. I just I do it for fun. I do it for work now. I just have way too much fun with it. But I I got got maybe a ridiculous, at home server, from these folks at Steeder Dyna Dynamics, that just has several, GPUs in it, and, very much looking forward to getting that set up and training my own models, hopefully, to make a, a a Ruby specific one, just just for fun.

Charles Max Wood [00:49:30]:
What what what kind of AI projects you're gonna do?

Valentino Stoll [00:49:34]:
Well, I wanna play with making, you you know, fine tune models on open source,

Nathan Bellow [00:49:39]:
Okay.

Valentino Stoll [00:49:39]:
LLMs. So it seems very easy to do at this point. Like, a lot of the infra is already established, and you just, like, set up and install your own Docker containers. And as long as you have your GPUs configured right with Python, it'll just, like, let you train what you want based on some open datasets. So I have some open datasets I've been eyeing, for training purposes, and I just wanna see, you know, how it all works and what I can make out of it. But I wanna start, like, I know a lot of, the good, like, Ruby design, like, gems that I would like draw from. And so I'd like to see, okay, if I, like, feed it a bunch of GitHub repos, with well designed Ruby, you know, how well will it generate the Ruby responses. Because I feel like for chat gpt or, like, a lot of these, you know, non open models, it's like, it's very hard to get it this the output that you want out of it without, like, massaging it a little bit.

Valentino Stoll [00:50:42]:
And so I wanna see maybe if a fine tuned version of it could help. Nice.

Charles Max Wood [00:50:51]:
Alright. I'm gonna throw in my picks next. First of all, I just want to point out that we've had 57 people watching us on Twitter and 1 on Twitch. So, the loaner on Twitch way to go, people on Twitter, welcome aboard. It's it's good to see you. I'm going to jump in with I was due to board game pick first. So if you're into board games, that's kind of my jam. And last weekend, I actually went to a board game convention in, Davis County, Utah.

Charles Max Wood [00:51:18]:
It's just north of Salt Lake in Layton, called Salt Con. And they're doing another event, same location in June. So if you wanna go to that, you might see me there hanging out with my buddies and playing games. One of the games I played at the convention is called Challengers, and challengers is a card game. So if you've played war, right, where you just have a deck of cards, just deal out the deck to both players, and then you flip cards. Whoever has the highest card wins. Right? And then you you win ties by putting out more cards. Well, this is kind of like that, except, you sta so you start with the base set.

Charles Max Wood [00:51:55]:
Everybody has a base set of cards in the play up to 8 people, which is awesome. Because most games, you know, the bigger games will go up to 6, 5 or 6. So going up to 8 is nice because I can like get my whole family playing and stuff. So what you do is you take your base set and then they have a cards, B cards and C cards. And so you draw 5, a cards and it'll let you put 2 of them in your hand, or into your deck. And then you play basically this game with your deck. And once you've, stacked up enough cards to, beat the top card of the other player, right? So if they have a 3 on top of their stack, then you, you know, 11133, you know, you, you take the flag and then they take all their cards and they put them on their bench. And the bench has 6 spots.

Charles Max Wood [00:52:43]:
So once their bench is full, if they can't put another card in their bench and they need to, they lose, or if they run out of cards, they lose same with you. Right? And so it's kind of this balanced game between, do I have enough cards to keep going if I have to, but do I have too many cards to where it's going to fill up my bench And you can double up the same cards. Right? So if you have 3 of the same kind of card, you start with 3, newcomers, I think is what they are. And so those ones, those newcomers, you can stack them up on your bench so that they only take one spot. But, anyway, that's the whole game. And, they have little cards that tell you who you're playing against. So, you know, it'll have a purple row and then a yellow row and then a green row and then a right. And so anyway, so it was it was really fun.

Charles Max Wood [00:53:28]:
I played it last night with my, my buddies as well. Right? There were just 4 of us. We just, you know, played played for a while. And, anyway, so I'm gonna pick challengers. Board Game Geek has a weight on it of 1.77, which means it is relatively easy to pick up. And it has an exclamation point on the end of it if you're wondering if that's the right one. And I'm putting links in the, comments on Twitch and Facebook and YouTube. But yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:03]:
Anyway, really had a good time with that. So I'm gonna pick that. And then, as I mentioned, I'm getting the Ruby Geniuses going right now. I wasn't gonna mention it until I had everything up, but it kinda got mentioned. So go to rubygeniuses.com, probably next week as we record this. So if you're listening to it on the recording, it's probably out and you can come join us. We're going to have a call every week, talking about something with Ruby. I'm going to be inviting, people who are guests on the show and things like that.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:31]:
And we'll have conversations and then we're going to have kind of a social every, like every 3rd or 4th week, we're going to have more where we just come on and get to know each other better. So that, Hey, I'm looking for a job. Well, okay. We're hiring or, you know, Hey, I'm trying to figure out deployments with Kamal. Oh, well, I've done that here. Let me help you out. Right? It's just a little bit more personalized that way. So, I mean, and that's really the, the, the run of it.

Charles Max Wood [00:54:57]:
You'll get, premium access to a couple of other things, but that's it. And then the other thing I'm setting up this week is, premium Ruby Rogues without the ads. And so if you wanna join the Ruby Rogue supporters club, there'll be a link, or you can just go to rubyrogues.com/premium. Again, this will be up next week. I'm I'm literally cutting things over today. But yeah. So go check those out. Alright.

Charles Max Wood [00:55:24]:
Nathan, what are your picks?

Nathan Bellow [00:55:28]:
Yes. So my first pick is, actually, bullet train. I'm, building some SaaS application, and that's Uh-huh. What I'm using. It's really, has been great for me. And, yeah, that's that's my first pick, and the the other picks, those I mentioned before. So just for everyone, if you go on first rubyfriend.org for any winning mentor or we want to be mentored. You go to first rubyfriend.org.

Nathan Bellow [00:56:06]:
And yeah.

Charles Max Wood [00:56:07]:
Yeah. I looked at bullet train. I've heard some people talk about it and really love it, and I've heard some people complain about some aspects of it. So maybe we should get somebody from them to come on and talk.

Nathan Bellow [00:56:18]:
I complained about it, but I'm sorry. I feel it's good.

Charles Max Wood [00:56:24]:
Alright. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap it up. Until next time, folks. Max out.