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I have no idea. I think if you do anything your whole life, it gets boring. You have to switch it up a little bit. That's why I'd be vague and boring for a question like this and say something like "eat well" or "wear nice shoes" or something. That never gets old.
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Git, Terminal + Visor, Textmate + PeepOpen, AckMate), and Safari (web inspector).. I work on an iMac, I also use Passenger Prefpane, and RVM!
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Definitely https://github.com/mbleigh/twitter-auth - it's a great way to create rails Twitter apps really quickly. I don't know whether there's a Rails 3 version, but it looks like sinefunc is working on it - and probably others too. I've moved to Rails 3 so next time I do a Twitter app I'll have to have a better look into it!
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I've used it for a small project, and it was fine. There are some things it has that Rails lacks, like the admin panel - it's a very quick and powerful feature. Rails has a few plugins that do similar things, but nothing built-in.
Overall, I think Django and Rails are similar but different. They're different approaches to the same goal, in that Rails is convention-over-configuration, whereas Django is configuration-over-convention. There are advantages to each - for example, I don't think Heroku could survive as a Django ecosystem - but I don't think one is necessarily outright "better" than the other. A skilled operator of either framework will be able to churn out a very decent application in a similar timeframe.
There's no reason you couldn't use both - in fact I'd recommend learning both. There's nothing to lose from learning multiple frameworks, and everything to gain. You start to get a clearer understanding of the two different approaches.
I obviously prefer Rails, because I love convention-over-configuration. There's a lot of power in conformity and predictability, and Ruby as a language gives you a lot of power to override the defaults Rails gives you. -
It's a beautiful language, and I love working with it. I remember how I felt when I first switched - it was such a relief to come from PHP to Ruby. I honestly think anybody who's used Ruby can attest to that. The only people I've ever met who ask me this question haven't really used Ruby yet.
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Not bad. Alone in the office writing some code!
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No way, because if you fuck it up you'll look like a fool. There's not much point in telling people what you're going to do, because if it doesn't end up being as good, everyone will be disappointed. Show, don't tell, like in this graph. http://www.coolhunting.com/2010/07/26/joeyrothposter_1.jpg
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I started in anout 2005 - writing lousy PHP code. Eventually I graduated to doing CodeIgniter and then Symfony. One day I packed up and moved to the UK, and soon after I started working in Rails.
The first thing I did that really got my name out was Spreadtweet - an application that lets you use Twitter in a spreadsheet. http://elliottkember.com/spreadtweet/ -
Windows for a long time, now Mac. Linux on my servers, though.
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I use jRails for all the Rails helpers - it's fantastic. Then I usually write lots of hand-coded jQuery for animations and interactions and stuff. So a mixture of both!
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Really soon. We have a name now, so it's a case of getting our shit together and buying some booze!
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I got really excited over building an Athlon 1800XP in about 2001. If I didn't know before then, it certainly became apparent.
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Coffee - I like to buy the super-expensive fair-trade stuff, and I'd kill for some Jamaican Blue Mountain, but in reality any decent coffee tastes just fine. The rest is just posturing.
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Ah, that takes me back to Yahoo chat rooms in the 90s. Err, not that I was there.
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None! At some point I will, I just haven't managed to yet. I'd like to, I just haven't done it yet. I go from focus to focus (at the moment it's Node.JS), so I'm sure at some point the focus will be FP.
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Loads. There's a big list at http://elliottkember.com/ - I'm probably getting close to 30!
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Definitely try and make a name for yourself somehow - get yourself known. The biggest problem you'll face is keeping the work coming in. A good reputation goes a long way. Also, make sure people pay up!
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Built-in thermostat, warm and cold taps. It also makes a good echo chamber - and rubber duck programming is easy!
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We just created a 37 Signals user called HAL 9000. They don't let you mess with their HTML any more! Back in the day, you could put JavaScript into basecamp tasks and change everything - that was a lot of fun :)
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I stumbled across using pink by mistake - I was using printer's primaries (CMYK) while I was designing my site, and the first one up just happened to be pink. I ran with it, and it's proven to be a great brand so far. It's different, it's kinda funky - and it's memorable.
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Elliott Kember’s Bio
I'm a Rails developer based in Bath, England!
