Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Mark Locklear

This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Mark Locklear. Mark first got into programming when there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for him to continue to work in quality assurance and he decided he wanted a change of career, so he went to community college to learn programming. They talk about how he was first exposed to Rails, where he is working currently, and what was it about Rails that got him excited. They also touch on what made him want to move from quality assurance, how he mentors his students at the community college, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

Ruby Rogues Episode 316
How did you first get into programming?
Has only been programming for about 10 years
Went into IT during the internet boom
Used to work in IT quality assurance
Went back to school for programming
Java, PHP, and C++ classes
Red Hat contracting in Raleigh
How did you get into Rails?
Taught himself Rails at his local library
Currently working at Extension.org
What is the cooperative extension service?
What do you do at Extension.org?
ask.extension.org
What was it with Ruby and Rails that made you want to move from QA?
Masters in Information Science
You’re never too old to learn
Get an idea for an app and try and make that
Ruby is very intuitive, friendly, and the syntax is easy to understand
Mentors students in Rails at the community college he went to
Expose yourself to as many frameworks as you can
It’s never too late to pursue a career in programming
And much, much more!

Links:

Ruby Rogues Episode 316
Red Hat
Rails
Extension.org
ask.extension.org
Ruby
@marklocklear
Mark’s Medium
locklear.me
Mark’s GitHub

Sponsors:

FreshBooks
Loot Crate

Picks:

Charles

Zig Ziglar
The Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews
Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves
Life Promises for Leaders by Zig Ziglar
Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni
Audible
The 5 Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman
The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Mark

Wicked Weed Brewing
The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester

Twitter Mentions