How I learned Ruby on Rails

It was time for a career change. My fiancée and I had just relocated across the country (from Boston to LA). It was her job that relocated us so we decided that I would just find a new job after we moved. But I didn’t want to go back to the same type of job, I had always wanted to be a programmer and was determined that this would be the time. I had taken a few programming courses while working on my Computer and Electronic Engineering degree but I didn’t have any experience so I knew this was not going to be an easy task. I put my resume together, posted it out on the World Wide Web and then started my search. About 2 weeks into the search I stumbled on a post on Craig’s List. It was an original add and caught my eye immediately. The line that really grabbed my attention was “if you don’t know everything that’s ok we can teach you”. That was all I needed and decided to reply to it.

About a week later, after several emails back and forth and a few phone interviews the potential employer presented me with a challenge: Build a complete Ruby on Rails web application. I had never used Ruby or Rails and had never even heard of them but I accepted the challenge. I headed directly to the closest book store and bought 3 or 4 books on Ruby and Rails and MySQL and jumped right into it. There was no timeline set but I wanted to get it done ASAP, I really wanted to impress. It was a pretty complex project and I was worried that it was beyond my abilities but I never gave up. One week to the day after the challenge was issued I completed it and sent it back. I am not sure if I impressed him or not but I felt great. I had just written my first web application.

A few weeks later he offered me a contract position and I accepted it. To this day my fiancée still likes to tell the story of how I got into programming when ever the opportunity presents itself. I enjoy hearing her tell it, she is so proud of me. For me this story is just an example of what you can accomplish if you really want something badly enough. If you put your mind to it, you really can do anything.