Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Andy Hunt

This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Andy Hunt. Andy has previously been on Ruby Rogues for Episode 277, and is known for his book The Pragmatic Programmer, his company The Pragmatic Bookshelf, and much more. He first got into programming because of his interest in electronic music and his first RadioShack project he created, which led him to finding a book on the future of integrated circuits. They talk about how he found Ruby, why he wrote Programming Ruby, what he is working on now, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 277
• His book The Pragmatic Programmer
• His company The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• How did you first get into programming?
• Interest in electronic music
• RadioShack project
• Book on the future of integrated circuits
• Fire in the Valley by Michael Swaine
• Exposure to the programming as it was being born
• How did you find Ruby?
• Time as a consultant
• Needed a flexible and fast language
• Couldn’t use C++ or Java
• Using Perl
• Amazed by the Unix shell
• Loved that he could write pages of code that would actually work
• Lacked documentation in the beginning
• Writing his Programming Rubybook
• Been messing around with Elixir recently
• Ruby is still his number one language
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Ruby Rogues Episode 277
• The Pragmatic Programmer
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Fire in the Valley by Michael Swaine
• Ruby
• Perl
• Programming Ruby
• Elixir
• Andy’s GitHub
• @PragmaticAndy
• Andy’s Website
• @pragprog

Sponsors:

• FreshBooks

Picks:

Charles

• Google Drive
• ScanSnap S1300i

Andy

• PragProg.com