Working With Rails

About me:

I’ve been working passionately with RoR for nearly 2 years. I have a great appreciation for well crafted code. I’m at my happiest when I’m thinking creatively about things such as usability, and interacting with designers, as well as modelling obects and implementing business logic. I would say that I write robust code.

I’m also a passionate musician, I currently play keys and backing vocals in a reggae band, and spent 2 years in Montreal making electronic music and playing it out.

I’m 32 years old. I initially studied Electrical Engineering and Microelectronics in University College Cork, a very well respected degree, which I graduated from in 2000. It was a bad time for electronics, and I spent a few years in the career wilderness of tech-support, before finally breaking free and pursuing my passion for software in a serious manner.

In May 2008 I achieved my second degree in Software Engineering from Tralee Institute of Technology, Co. Kerry. After jumping straight into 3rd year (due to late enrollment, and previous degree). I worked my ass off and graduated with a ‘merit grade 1’ (just a few points off a ‘distinction), which is the equivalent of a ‘high second-class honours’. – The grading system here is a bit different to other countries.

Since then, I’ve decided to go the difficult non-traditional route of teaching myself Rails and getting involved in some projects. The reason I’ve chosen this route, and not a full-time job as a developer, is because:

1. I wanted to work with Ruby on Rails, as the greatest emerging web framework.

2. I didn’t want to jump straight into employment with a job that didn’t satisfy me

3. I’m working on, and am continuing to work on a personal project – a web application for musicians. I have worked on it consistently for the past number of months. One of the aspects I have enjoyed the most has been working closely with a graphic designer I hired to create an elegant and sophisticated product.

On top of this, I have built a number of content-management systems in Rails for small businesses here in Ireland. My aim with these is to make the user experience as smooth and as versatile as possible. I’m also working with a small company in Cork on a SaaS application for grain companies, as a part-time contractor – although this work is winding down somewhat as we’re reaching the end of the project. I have also worked as a part-time contractor on other projects in Ruby on Rails.

I’ve recently found some time to play with facebook apps and FBML, and although I haven’t done a lot of it, I’m very interested to find out some more, particularly in conjunction with Ruby on Rails, and the facebooker plugin. I’m also a JQuery enthusiast.