What Is Ruby On Rails? And A Bunch Of Other Answers You’ll Want To Have Before You Hire A Developer. – The Obie Fernandez Interview
on Mar 27, 2009 - 6:23 PM PSTThe full program
This is an audio program. Listen and/or download it here:
A few lessons from this program
Have you ever gone to hire a web developer and realized that you don’t even know what the programming languages mean, let alone how to pick the right one?
In the interview I recorded with Obie Fernandez, he explains the main web development languages and how to pick the right one. Obie is a pioneering Rails developer, the author of The Rails Way, and founder and CEO of Hashrocket, which is a leader in Ruby on Rails web application development.
Here’s an edited excerpt from our conversation.
Andrew: What’s “Ruby”?
Obie: Ruby is a general-purpose programming language that you can use to write anything. People over the years have used it for automating on servers and batch jobs and all sorts of things.
What is “Ruby on Rails”?
Rails is a web framework. It was started by David Heinemeier Hansson. He started working for Jason Fried at 37 Signals who wanted to build a management product called Basecamp.
David said, “I’m going to write it in Ruby.”
And Jason said, “I don’t care what you write it in. You know best.”
David liked Ruby and started writing in it. And he did a very important thing. He took the stuff that wasn’t specific to Basecamp and he open sourced it as Ruby on Rails. So basically, all this stuff that was generally applicable to web apps he put out there for other developers to use.
Could you use an analogy to make it clearer?
I would liken Rails to a provider of kit car parts. Things are provided to you so you can snap them together and make arbitrarily complex vehicles.
This is just an excerpt. The full program also also covers:
- What is PHP, ASP.NET, Java, etc?
- Which language is right for your startup?
- How to find your tech co-founder.
- What Obie bought with the royalty check from his book.
[Thank you Jonathan Nelson for helping Mixergy by suggesting this interview. I'll tell everyone to help you with your new site, TwitterMass.]
Your turn. In the comments, let me know if you want to see more programs like this about development or if you’d rather see Mixergy stick with business issues.
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March 27th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Thanks so much, Andrew!
Finding a tech co-founder has been such an issue for me that I've taken to learning programming myself.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The line that stands out to me (from costly experience)…
“And Jason said, I don’t care what you write it in…”
Jason knows that the customers don't care either, as long as it does what it needs to do.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
This is great right on. Tech interviews are fine – we are here for learning about internet business and the website technology is just important as the business side. Thanks so much!
March 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I want you to talk more about how the companies made their money, what strategies they used, and how they get in toutch with their customers.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I get a lot of emails about how to find the right co-founders. I should do
more interviews on that. Thanks!
March 29th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Those are my favorite kinds of interviews. The biographies.
But I slowed down on those because people told me that they wanted more
actionable techniques and fewer stories.
Thanks for telling me Felipe.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Thanks Stephen. That's helpful to hear.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I had a lot of respect for the way Obie answered the question about which
language to code in. Even though he spent a lot of time telling me why he
loved Ruby on Rails, his answer was to use whatever language your developer
you developer is passionate about.
Sounds like the same thing Jason did.
Thanks Paul!
March 29th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Great interview Andrew – even though my background is technical I had enjoyed the interview and Odie did great in paring down some possibly very confusing topics.
I think this interview would be useful to both non-technical and technical audiences.
About finding technical founders for entrepreneurs who dont have this sort of background – I would recommend going to the various meetups and user groups we have here in the area.
Even though you may not meet someone to be your future CTO/co-founder right away. You'll gain a number of things that may help you be successful down the road. For example just getting a tech into your team doesn't mean the story's over. There's going to be a lot of team building and communication that's going to happen that will bring about a great product. Part of mingling with the tech community will expose to you terms, people, and culture of the development community so that when your team get crunching on making your product you are affective in translating business objectives into actionable/meaningful tech goals.
Other than that you would be able to ask some of the questions Andrew asked during the interview – my feeling is if you're open and honest about learning as he is in this interview the folks at these gatherings will be more than willing to help you out.
BTW next weekendl is http://larubyconf.com – i believe it will be LA's first.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Right on!
March 30th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Great interview.
I actually heard a lot of business decision points people do not always consider in this interview beyond the technology:
Solution/Technology Selection: Buy vs Build from scratch. Scaleability and post production maintainability should be considered. Are you building a framework for the long haul or assuming that you will replace in a year? Ultimately, the right technical resource determines good code not the programming language itself.
A comment on Agile, actually SDLC methodologies in general: for start-ups I think it's less important to understand a specific process (more relevant when working in or as a vendor to corporations). It is not necessary to ask a developer if he has agile experience but rather establish how you will work together. How requirements will be provided, changes will be handled and how to track and communicate everything.
I think the technical interviews are useful, more so when they reflect back on the business aspect. For me, it helps to learn how to make better technology decisions that are in effect better cost effective business decisions.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
This is very helpful. Thanks!
March 31st, 2009 at 2:04 pm
@Andrew
Very interesting. Keep up the tech interviews.
What wasn't addressed was the cult-like following of RoR – although I thought Obie seemed very fair. I have seen people erupt in violent rage when defending RoR from those who are critical of it.
Also, RoR is said to not scale well (Twitter). Although, some argue the exact opposite.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/01/twitter-sa...
April 1st, 2009 at 5:32 am
Andrew, regarding the question you posed at the end of the interview – yes, some more interviews focused on development would be awesome. A lot of us wear multiple hats!
April 1st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Thanks. I'll see if I can find a few other angles on it.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
where is the link for the full video? I cant find it
April 8th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Bryan, I haven't been putting up links to the full videos. It's becoming the
most-requested addition. I'll get on it. Thanks for asking Bryan. -Andrew
April 8th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
O thanks for the response, I was able to see the whole shoemoney interview but not this one. I wanted to know his response to how to find a tech co-owner.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:08 am
I'm on the same page with Morgan. Finding a tech co-founder can be very difficult.
I've personally started two mildly successful tribes (1,000 users daily was a big benchmark for me), but wanted to take those tribes and branch them out to bigger projects. Unfortunately as a creative marketer with little tech background (I've learned a little C++, Java and HTML), I find it difficult to successfully build a startup web company.
I know that you also had a partner named Michael that helped you along, and I've had a couple partners along the way, but it is difficult to find the right person, especially when you can only offer partnership stake in return for the sweat equity.
Any insight on your own part, or through future interviews, would be greatly appreciated.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Michael is my brother. I was very lucky to have him as a partner.
A salesman/developer partnership is very helpful in business.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Thanks for this interview Andrew. Thank you too Obie.
I've been struggling between PHP and RoR for a project in mind and this interview helped a lot. I'm going to try to bootstrap a project and been teaching myself RoR. I appreciate that Obie clarified few things that I've been struggling to find out and also appreciate the few sites he recommended. Just what I was looking for. I will also look into his book.
Andrew. I wasn't aware you did interviews like this. I like it. Maybe having Obie in again for more Ruby on Rails grilling would be a nice touch.
I guess categorizing your interviews should be a priority. I searched your site and by chance ran into this interview.
June 7th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
- 100% right on the categories.
- I'm not sure sure I'm equipped to ask more meaningful questions
about RoR. I'm not a developer and I feel out of my depth when we get
into programming.
June 7th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
- 100% right on the categories.
- I'm not sure sure I'm equipped to ask more meaningful questions
about RoR. I'm not a developer and I feel out of my depth when we get
into programming.
July 31st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Andrew, I do not see an audio-only (mp3) copy of this interview. Do you have one to post? Thanks!
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Ryan, it's at the very bottom of the post. Maybe I should move it up.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Your blog appears quite informative. Can you please tell me how can I read your rss blog?
regards
charcoal grill
November 24th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Yes, I am having this dilemma at the moment with choosing which developing platform to use for scalability, so this interview would be great. Accept how do I watch the whole interview?
December 1st, 2009 at 5:57 am
Andrew
I am not sure if it's me but I can't find the interview – do I have to go via iTunes? (which means downloading that thing) – I have clicked on your links but can't see it. I have looked at other interviews you do and don't seem to have had this problem. I can see others have had this problem – at the end of the post what does that mean?
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
For anybody looking for the complete audio interview, I found it here:
http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-Obi...
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
ryanh
- got it – many thanks.
John
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
For anybody looking for the complete audio interview, I found it here:
http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-Obi...
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
ryanh
- got it – many thanks.
John