Ruby on Rails Analyst/Programmers, Glasgow

Rails
1

Hi All,

I would like your advice. I’m helping a young company set up a ROR team
from entry level to Senior A/P. I’ve not worked with this tech before so
have some basic questions.

What are your thoughts:
Is this a well exploited technology in Scotland/UK?
What’s the typical career path for an RoR A/P ( from a PHP background or
other)?
If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
takes to become proficient?

Thanks in advance for any insights shared.

Deirdre

2

Deirdre S. wrote:

Hi All,

I would like your advice. I’m helping a young company set up a ROR team
from entry level to Senior A/P. I’ve not worked with this tech before so
have some basic questions.

What are your thoughts:
Is this a well exploited technology in Scotland/UK?
What’s the typical career path for an RoR A/P ( from a PHP background or
other)?
If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
takes to become proficient?

Thanks in advance for any insights shared.

Deirdre

Firstly, it doesn’t matter how well exploited the technology is because
the support you (may) require for it can be done remotely. This includes
hosting, of course. RoR already has an extensive community and a growing
API, with support from major banking bodies and other industry-specific
experts.

Secondly, A CS graduate is likely to have studied C of some variation
and should, considering their assumed capabilities, be able to
understand the structure of Ruby and the way in which it communicates
with Rails.

Thirdly, may I ask why you have nominated the use of RoR? Surely, it
would be better to let the Senior team decide which language is more
suitable. I am asking this in spite of using RoR myself.

3

PH, Thank you for the reply. I am trying to assess how available A/Ps
will be hence this question. What’s API mean here? The company already
use RoR, they are looking for more developers, that’s where I have come
in.

Deirdre

Pale H. wrote:

Deirdre S. wrote:

Hi All,

I would like your advice. I’m helping a young company set up a ROR team
from entry level to Senior A/P. I’ve not worked with this tech before so
have some basic questions.

What are your thoughts:
Is this a well exploited technology in Scotland/UK?
What’s the typical career path for an RoR A/P ( from a PHP background or
other)?
If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
takes to become proficient?

Thanks in advance for any insights shared.

Deirdre

Firstly, it doesn’t matter how well exploited the technology is because
the support you (may) require for it can be done remotely. This includes
hosting, of course. RoR already has an extensive community and a growing
API, with support from major banking bodies and other industry-specific
experts.

Secondly, A CS graduate is likely to have studied C of some variation
and should, considering their assumed capabilities, be able to
understand the structure of Ruby and the way in which it communicates
with Rails.

Thirdly, may I ask why you have nominated the use of RoR? Surely, it
would be better to let the Senior team decide which language is more
suitable. I am asking this in spite of using RoR myself.

4

Deirdre S. wrote:

PH, Thank you for the reply. I am trying to assess how available A/Ps
will be hence this question. What’s API mean here? The company already
use RoR, they are looking for more developers, that’s where I have come
in.

Deirdre

Firstly, the availability of RoR Developers in the area specified is
impossible for me to determine but there is certainly a lot of logic
in making the opportunity available to CS graduates; as I said, they
should be more than capable of understanding Ruby and the way in which
it communicates with Rails.

Secondly, an API is an interface that considers the expansion and
development of an application by providing it with support and
information for additional implementations. http://api.rubyonrails.org/
is a specific example of this.

My apologies, I assumed the company had no current developers and were
looking to build a team from the foundations.

5

“If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
takes to become proficient?”

It will be very difficult if you are just a CS grad.

ROR is a framework of whole set of web technologies. So, it will be very
difficult to master it in less than 6 months.

You need a strong web development technical leader with reasonable ROR
expertise for atleast a year.

CS graduates dont get educated with open source technologies. They
usually
come up with Java background.

If you get graduates with PHP background and who have self-learnt Ruby
languages, you are lucky.

Put an advertisement in ROR job sites, eg
jobs.rubynow.comand see how many are turning from Glasgow.

On 16 June 2010 11:37, Deirdre S. [email protected] wrote:

If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
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6

On 16 June 2010 11:37, Deirdre S. [email protected] wrote:

I would like your advice. I’m helping a young company set up a ROR team
from entry level to Senior A/P.

Firstly, I’d query why there has been a choice of any technology
platform without anyone of experience to decide? Normally, I’d expect
the CTOs platform of experience is what’s plumbed for. What’s the
rationale for RoR? (not that it’s necessarily a bad choice! :wink:

What are your thoughts:
Is this a well exploited technology in Scotland/UK?

In Scotland, you might try to ask at Rubaidh.com is for sale | HugeDomains -
although they may not be inclined to respond if you’re starting a
competitor!

In the rest of the UK there does seem to be a fair spread of us, but
it is a small pool.

If a CS grad, is it difficult to pick up - how long would you think it
takes to become proficient?

Very few people I have met are straight to Ruby/RoR from uni. The
majority have arrived after a period of their career and are thus
quite senior. As far as CS grads (or self-taught techies) are
concerned, you may find yourself in the position of having to teach
them everything - even re-teach a some of what they’ve covered in
their courses - from HTML, CSS upwards.
But on the flip side (and I worked with one guy like this) very bright
people can pick stuff up very quickly.

Thanks in advance for any insights shared.

If you’d consider temporary help - even consultation advice while you
set up your team. Feel free to get in touch directly - I’m a freelance
developer.

Regards