On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 3:40 AM, John S. [email protected] wrote:
Is the Ruby language and or the Rails technology
dying to more mainstream technologies? Or is it
that companies have yet to adopt it and will soon do.
Much more the latter. If you look at the help-wanted ads from today
vs previous years, you see a growing demand for Ruby, and especially
Rails. It’s a wonderful time to be a Rubyist right now, as the tools
(the language itself, frameworks, etc.) are mature enough to be
stable, and it’s mainstream enough to be in high demand, but not
mainstream enough to be in high supply. Rubyists can extract a
premium, be it in extra pay or better conditions.
I have a very
strong opinion about my productivity in C# versus Ruby; it makes more
sense for me to program in Ruby. WHY CAN"T COMPANIES SEE THIS!!!
What they tend to see is “if something goes wrong with C#, we can
ask/sue/whatever Microsoft, but if something goes wrong with Ruby or
Rails, we’re screwed”. This is part of the general bias against Open
Source, be it Ruby, Python, or whatever. This is much more common in
large companies, but even some small companies have it.
please let me know what you think are my options and suggestions,
First, don’t sweat the internship details too much. Do it in whatever
language you can, and learn as much language-agnostic techniques for
general software engineering quality as you can. Learn how to TDD…
not just a particular testing tool. Learn how to pair-program… not
just a particular screen-sharing program. Learn how to design
software for robustness and scalability… without depending on the
features of a given language.
Second, when you finish school, realize that only you will take care
of your career. Ruby may be the latest hotness right now… but that
won’t last forever. Learn a new language every year, preferably
something with (or gaining) decent traction in industry. Use these
languages to work on side projects, so you don’t just forget them.
These and many other tips are in a classic book, “The Pragmatic
Programmer”, by Dave T. and Andy H… One career tip that I
forget whether they cover, is the subject of company loyalty: there is
pretty much no such thing any more, in either direction. A company,
especially a publicly-held corporation, exists to make money, and if
letting you go makes them more money than keeping you, you’re gone, no
matter how nice your boss or even the CEO may be. The Ruby Rogues
just had a great episode on this (#125, Loyalty and Layoffs). Keep
your resume ready to roll at a moment’s notice… and even more
importantly, your professional network (see below).
Third, if you’re worried about the job market where you are now,
realize that you can move! Moving for a job is very common, and your
first job past school is the perfect opportunity to pull up roots and
pick a new place. There is a lot of Ruby going on here in the
Washington DC / Baltimore area, also in NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF,
Portland (Oregon), and many other hot-spots. Also, many companies now
realize that physical presence at a desk means very little, so you may
be able to work remotely. I wouldn’t count on it straight out of
school, but maybe after you’ve had a few years of real-world
experience.
Lastly, build your “soft” skills, things like communication,
leadership, and networking. Not as in Ethernet or WiFi, but as in
knowing a lot of people who would be willing to help you, which is a
lot more than just having their business card or their LinkedIn
connection. Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org) can help a lot
with the communication (not just public speaking) and leadership,
which in turn will help with the networking.
-Dave
