boston.rb certification

[Chris Houhoulis]

Hi all. A friend from out of town came with me to this week's meeting.
He knows the group is interested in and concerned about lacking enough
"talent" to supply employers. (Thanks, Greg, for clarifying what kind
of talent was up for discussion).

Yet, I and many others -- Rails developers that are beginner to
intermediate level -- have the opposite experience: we're having a very
hard time finding jobs. Employers seem to be looking for people with
more experience, previous professional Rails work, better github
codebases, etc.

An idea*: Boston.rb could define a "certification track". A list of
steps that candidates could follow to become "Boston.rb-certified".

Boston.rb members could vet the code, or verify the candidate's
completion of each task ("worked well with others", "learned quickly",
"used git appropriately in a group project", etc.)

The end result would be:

- the group could vouch for the person.
- the person would have an attractive and balanced portfolio.

Providing general guidelines is simple: "Learn stuff, develop some apps,
push them onto heroku, come to meetings & hackfests, post code on
github, and contribute to an open-source project."

But a defined certification track would help candidates allocate their
time**, choose projects wisely, and prove their skills.

For candidates, knowing there are specific people they can turn to for a
little guidance along the way would help too.

What do you think?

Chris

* A bunch of people helped formulate this idea at the end of the
meeting Tuesday.

** For example: I myself have spent too much time on too many projects
that don't impress employers. Learning routing inside and out in Rails
2.2, and demonstrating heavy tweakage, was pretty useless when I could
have been learning more efficient and buzz-worthy ways to do the same
thing -- Rack, named scopes, Rails 2.3 (and Rails 3) routing, or
probably 20 other things I don't even know about.

[Dan Croak]

There was suggestion of a mentor-protege program that might accomplish
the same goals.

A more experienced developer is paired with someone less experienced,
guides them to the right resources for learning, helps review code,
suggests ways to improve your Github codebases, and maybe make
introductions for jobs when the time is right.

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[Chris Maxwell]

A mentor-protege program? Sounds great. Where do I sign up!? (as a protege)

Chris

[Michael Breen]

Hi Chris,

I think this is a good idea but I'd be very careful about using the word "certification". The Rails community at large has not been that receptive to that word probably due to it's use in the MS and Java communities.

Good luck.
Mike

[Wyatt Greene]

I think that's an excellent idea, Dan.

Chris, you bring up a good point.  If there are Rails developers looking for work and people are having a hard time hiring Rails developers then we've got a problem.  I can think of three causes:

Not Knowing

Programmer A wants a job and employer B wants to hire, but they just don't know about each other.  As a programmer, then, you have to make yourself findable.  Some good ways to do this are to be an active participant in Bostonrb and other tech meetups, have a blog, get on twitter, put yourself on workingwithrails.com (and mark yourself as available for hire!), get on LinkedIn, etc.  It might be nice to have a section on bostonrb.org that lists Rails devs who are looking for side projects and contract work.

Information Asymmetry

You may know that you're a top-notch programmer, but how does someone hiring you know that?  How do they distinguish you from someone who can't deliver?  I would recommend reading chapter five of The Undercover Economist because it does a good job of explaining how information asymmetry can destroy a market.

Lack of Skill

Finally, the reason a dev is not hired may be that their skills need more sharpening.

I think you're on to something with the idea of certification, Chris, but I think certification per se wouldn't work.  Ideally it would be a way to signal to the market that I'm a qualified Rails dev.  In practice, the technology moves so fast that it would be hard to do.

I think probably the best analog to a certification would be writing a Rails app.  It would be sort of a rite-of-passage for a dev to code and launch their own Rails app from the ground up, by yourself.  Of course they should start by pair programming or otherwise getting help building their first couple of Rails apps in order to accelerate the learning, but the eventual goal would be to have a Rails app they could show off.  Now they'd have a portfolio piece.

The mentor-protege program could help a beginner get to the point where they can code a Rails app on their own.  A bostonrb wiki could also be helpful as it could contain resources and tips for people getting started, kind of like the "certification track" you mentioned.

--Wyatt

[Dan Croak]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Wyatt Greene <techi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think that's an excellent idea, Dan.

Not my idea! I'll let the masterminds reveal themselves and any other details they were thinking about.

[Keenan Brock]

Hi Chris,

This reminds me a little of the controversy around Obie Fernandez:
http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2009/02/rails-maturity-model.html

As a developer it is very attractive: Do these steps to improve.
As an employer, it is very attractive: This person has the skills I want.

And every time I look at http://workingwithrails.com/ , I want to go and do the things that they have in their checklist.
Not necessarily to have a full checklist, but because they are good and fun to do.
So for some, it may be a good motivator.

Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants, and many other professions have certifications, tests, and or checklists.
Massage Therapists need to take a certain amount of training a year.
Every profession needs something like this.

But the implementation is a little tricky and some people react strongly to this.
Schools are in the middle of trying to figure this out. Either with teacher certification, tenure, student testing, or college certification.

I remember when the Java Certification came out. Some people seemed to focus on the paper and not the programming.
College is similar - just get the diploma.

So people react - cause they don't want to take tests, they just want to learn and have fun.

Mentorship, a checklist, a full fledge certification - they all seem good ways for us to take control, help others, and learn.
And different people learn in different ways.

Seems like a good opportunity for a github / heroku / twitter app.

--Keenan

PS We could have sub cerfications like the hashrocket stack or thoughtbot stack.

[Wyatt Greene]

Also, certifications can easily backfire.  I think Chris' goal is to lower the barrier to entry for new Rails developers.

In chapter one of The Undercover Economist (you can tell I like that book :) Tim Harford talks about "green belt", or artificial barriers to entry that keep supply low.  This is in reference to legislation that discourages development in a wide area of land around a city.  This has the effect of driving the price of rent in the city higher than it normally would be.  Here's a quote from the book:

"Landlords and executives are not the only people who like to avoid competition and who like to enjoy monopoly rents.  Trade unions, lobby groups, people studying for a professional qualification, and even national governments like them too.  Every day people all around us are trying to avoid competition or reap the rewards of others who have succeeded in doing so."

I could see a scenario where the certification turns into a barrier that "elite" Rails programmers erect around themselves and exacerbate the problem.

You also have the problem of who develops the certification?  There will always be a gap between what a certification claims a person can do and what the person can actually do.  A conflict of interest of those who are developing the certification could make this gap wider.  And the people best qualified to come up with a certification may not have any incentive to do so.

I think the idea of certification is attractive, but it's very hard to execute well.

[Ryan Angilly]

Didn't read all the responses, so accept my apologies if this is
repeating someone:

My initial reaction is that if you can't find work because you're too
inexperienced, it's because you're too inexperienced. :)

Instead of doing it on your own, or going down the
mentorship/certification track, maybe you should look into
subcontracting for established independents and smaller firms. Dan
Pickett, for example, has Enlight Solutions. What other small
firms/teams/independents are out there? Are you guys & gals looking
for more hands?

Perhaps we need some kind of marketplace for senior developers to find
junior developers and vice versa.

$0.02 from someone working instead of being at RailsConf,
-Ryan

[Charles M Magid]

Is there a way to motivate employer's to create more contract to hire
positions for n00bs? I know of one Bostonrber who tried this and got
burnt. Is there a way to mitigate the risk and at the same time
encourage employers to do it? I think it is in the Ruby communities
interest to try.

We want more companies moving towards Ruby not away. Having worked
for a company that did Smalltalk and couldn't find enough programmers
to meet their demand and consequently dropping that development effort
I am particularly sensitive to this issue. The company did a survey
and found the number of colleges teaching intro courses using
Smalltalk was much less then 1%. Those issues, plus lack of
interoperability, motivated their move away from Smalltalk and to
Java. I hope history does not repeat itself with Ruby.

I think certification, in the spirit of Sun's Java Certification,
would not be good for this dynamic a community, for reasons mentioned
by others. On the other hand it would be nice if a conscientious MIT
Grad. like Chris could get a job doing Ruby after experimenting with
it for a couple of years.

ITA is a company which requires an applicant to complete one of the
programming assignments on their website when applying for a
position. I think it would help if other potential Ruby on Rails
employers used this type of pre-qualifying measure to screen n00bs for
paid internships. That would provide more fodder for contract to
hire positions as well. Employers would come up with the specific set
of skills that they are most interested in.

BTW Wyatt can I borrow your copy of the Undercover Economist?

> > And every time I look athttp://workingwithrails.com/, I want to go  

> >> ruby...@googlegroups.com

> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to boston-rubygro...@googlegroups.com

> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/boston-rubygroup

[sternicus]

Hi All,

I'll attempt to summarize the mentor conversation Croakie mentioned so
that everyone can contribute...

A friend mentioned her reluctance to take on bigger Rails projects
because she feels she is lacking experience. She is looking for a more
experienced partner to help her when she is stuck and guarantee the
quality of her work.

My thoughts are that finding someone to "co-sign" a contract might be
difficult, even if they're getting paid. However, I do not think it'd
be hard to find someone willing to volunteer as a mentor/coach type.

What does everyone think about such a program? I know I'd love to have
a mentor. I'm happy to be one too.

Dan, I think you mentioned how important it is to have a good match
between mentor & protege and how valuable a matchmaker has been in
similar programs.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to match people up?

Chris, do you think a mentor could help candidates accomplish some of
the goals you mentioned?

-Greg

On Jun 10, 2:10 pm, Dan Croak <dcr...@thoughtbot.com> wrote:

[Wyatt Greene]

+1

Also, we may want to shy away from grouping people as proteges and
mentors because it may depend on the topic. I'd be glad to be a
mentor for Rails 3, for example, but would end up in the protege
category when dealing with message queues. railsmentors.org
categorizes by topic.

[Andrew Vargo]

I am curious how folks decide what level they are with Ruby (on Rails).

I was surprised to see so many expert level from the survey. I wonder what is even generally seen as mid-level or senior as far as abilities and such.

Also, newer folks should certainly be trying a portfolio project, and likely get that - but what sort of things catch the eye as far as features (suitable complexity) ?

-- Andrew

[Wyatt Greene]

The Dunning-Kruger effect is certain to confound self-reported skill level :)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Here's what I would consider an example of a portfolio site that shows competency as a Rails programmer:

• The code is on github.  This allows the code to be inspected as well as demonstrates at least a basic level of git.
• The HTML markup is valid and shows an understanding of HTML (doctype is present, tags are used as intended).
• There are at least five data models with at least one interesting relationship (for example, a has_many :through).  The choice of data models demonstrates an ability to name and organize concepts well.
• Tests are present, which demonstrates that you know how to write them.  Both integration tests and unit tests should be showcased.
• jQuery is used (or another JavaScript library, but jQuery is the most popular one among Rails developers).
• The site is decently designed.  Rails developers don't have to demonstrate design chops, but unfortunately it's human nature to judge a book by its cover.  Rails developers do need to demonstrate that they can implement someone else's design.  So a portfolio site would be best (if possible) to have some guidance from a designer or at least another developer who doesn't suck at design.
• Is hosted on its own domain.  This shows competence with DNS.
• Has authentication, which is part of most Rails apps.
• Has at least one Ajax action.
• Renders well on various browsers.

Even though that demonstrates just the basics, it's a tall order in terms of time and effort for a beginner.  So if you're a beginner, start small and work your way up to this, otherwise you'll get frustrated.  But if you can program an app with the above characteristics, there is no reason you shouldn't get hired, especially in today's market where it seems that plenty of people are looking for Rails devs.

--Wyatt

[Neil Cook]

Wyatt,

I am with you on your list except for the DNS entry.I would also be Javascript library agnostic. If you can do one then you can do any.

Cheers,
/Neil

[Luke]

If I'm hiring someone, I want to know they can do what I need them to do.  Usually that means keeping track of something which I would not be able to explain to them or necessarily micromanage them through.  I want them to be able to make certain decisions - which in a large part consists of recognizing that such-and-such is important without my telling them.

I can't always articulate it to myself.  But after a few questions I can get an idea of whether the person in front of me is going to be able to jump along without my help.

As for "expertise" I don't really think in those terms, assuming that the necessary domain-specific knowledge can be explained in a few solid conversations.  If I were looking for an expert I'd be looking for an expert shitstorm-handler, or an expert problem-identifier.  Pretty vague terms.  But if the difference between an "advanced" rails developer and an "expert" rails developer is $20 an hour and a few ActiveRecord cheat sheet PDFs I'm in favor of going with whichever one most quickly busts out a limerick when I ask them to and keeping them well-stocked with books after hire.

This technique doesn't work so well with people who are more aware than I.  In that case one can just fall back on being impressed by portfolios and accomplishments.

 - Luke

[Liana]

This is an incredibly interesting discussion. How does someone really
go from n00b to rockstar?

After having worked professionally with ror for over 3 years, I still
feel like a n00b because during that time I wasn't attending boston.rb
events, I couldn't post my proprietary work to github and I hadn't the
opportunity to work with some of the other vital technologies like
cucumber, memcache, rack, sinatra... the list seems endless.

It's not enough to be a good rails programmer, to be hired by some of
the more exciting companies you need to have a whole package of
skills. And while some will argue that you don't need to know
everything, you do need to know enough to understand how these other
technologies fit together and how to get started when presented with a
project. Personally, I think this is what causes the cavernous gap
between n00b/intermediate and advanced user.

I agree that that a mentor program is the best way to go. And since
many of us are experts at one thing and n00bs at another, it needs to
be socially acceptable to switch roles depending on the topic.

Best,
Liana

On Jun 11, 4:40 am, Luke <wlgriffi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I'm hiring someone, I want to know they can do what I need them to do.
>  Usually that means keeping track of something which I would not be able to
> explain to them or necessarily micromanage them through.  I want them to be
> able to make certain decisions - which in a large part consists of
> recognizing that such-and-such is important without my telling them.
>
> I can't always articulate it to myself.  But after a few questions I can get
> an idea of whether the person in front of me is going to be able to jump
> along without my help.
>
> As for "expertise" I don't really think in those terms, assuming that the
> necessary domain-specific knowledge can be explained in a few solid
> conversations.  If I were looking for an expert I'd be looking for an expert
> shitstorm-handler, or an expert problem-identifier.  Pretty vague terms.
>  But if the difference between an "advanced" rails developer and an "expert"
> rails developer is $20 an hour and a few ActiveRecord cheat sheet PDFs I'm
> in favor of going with whichever one most quickly busts out a limerick when
> I ask them to and keeping them well-stocked with books after hire.
>
> This technique doesn't work so well with people who are more aware than I.
>  In that case one can just fall back on being impressed by portfolios and
> accomplishments.
>
>  - Luke
>

> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 12:19 AM, Neil Cook <n.k.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wyatt,
>
> > I am with you on your list except for the DNS entry.I would also be
> > Javascript library agnostic. If you can do one then you can do any.
>
> > Cheers,
> > /Neil
>

> > On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Wyatt Greene <techifer...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> The Dunning-Kruger effect is certain to confound self-reported skill level
> >> :)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
>
> >> Here's what I would consider an example of a portfolio site that shows
> >> competency as a Rails programmer:
>

> >>    - The code is on github.  This allows the code to be inspected as well

> >>    as demonstrates at least a basic level of git.

> >>    - The HTML markup is valid and shows an understanding of HTML (doctype

> >>    is present, tags are used as intended).

> >>    - There are at least five data models with at least one interesting

> >>    relationship (for example, a has_many :through).  The choice of data models
> >>    demonstrates an ability to name and organize concepts well.

> >>    - Tests are present, which demonstrates that you know how to write

> >>    them.  Both integration tests and unit tests should be showcased.

> >>    - jQuery is used (or another JavaScript library, but jQuery is the

> >>    most popular one among Rails developers).

> >>    - The site is decently designed.  Rails developers don't have to

> >>    demonstrate design chops, but unfortunately it's human nature to judge a
> >>    book by its cover.  Rails developers do need to demonstrate that they can
> >>    implement someone else's design.  So a portfolio site would be best (if
> >>    possible) to have some guidance from a designer or at least another
> >>    developer who doesn't suck at design.

> >>    - Is hosted on its own domain.  This shows competence with DNS.
> >>    - Has authentication, which is part of most Rails apps.
> >>    - Has at least one Ajax action.
> >>    - Renders well on various browsers.

[Maurício Linhares]

A simple way of building this knowledge about these other tools that
float around the Ruby/Rails community is building your own pet
projects using them.

Want to learn Cucumber? Start a little project using it to figure out
how it works and then blog about it, write about your findings and
then share the code on GitHub. The fact that your contractor doesn't
use the "fancy" tools in it's project doesn't mean you can't start
using them by yourself in your personal projects.

Most of the people I've seen working with Ruby/Rails are in real world
projects that just can't follow the trends and fashions that show up
every single day but this should never be seen as an excuse. We should
experiment, we should try new technologies and solutions and there
will be a time when they are the best option in a "oldie" project and
you will have the skills to get this new fancy tool from your toolbox
and get it up and running in the project.

I think the main difference between the n00b and the rockstar is that
the rockstars will not wait for an opportunity to lean a new
technology in their jobs, they'll learn it as soon as possible and
will be ready to apply it when needed in their jobs. Being proactive
is always better than always being the firefighting guy.

-
Maurício Linhares
http://codeshooter.wordpress.com/ | http://twitter.com/mauriciojr

[Chris Maxwell]

Along the idea of a mentor program, something I did recently with another member of the community was a kind of skills exchange. A couple times a week we would meet via Skype for an hour or two and screen-share/code. For one hour I would teach front end coding, and on the next hour (or meeting) my counterpart would teach me more difficult back end stuff I was interested in learning.

Between the both of us we were "rock stars" in our perspective areas of expertise and once we worked out the kinks on how to teach one another, and what the other was actually looking for, the exchange was awesome. Something I looked forward to and gained a lot from.

The actual work we did to teach would vary from actual projects we were working on, to just made up challenges. The key was to constantly share how you were thinking when tackling a problem or coding task, as you worked through it.

Anyway the exchange worked great...then I got hired by a company to do some consulting and all my time went puff!

Chris

2010/6/11 Maurício Linhares <mauricio...@gmail.com>

[Dan Pickett]

Hey all, 

I think I was in one of the early talks about a mentor program, and I felt compelled to weigh in.

 

It feels like a lot of people that are new to the framework are looking for the equivalent of a get rich quick scheme but applied to skill. While I think a mentor program would be awesome, I want to emphasize that there is no easy way to become great at anything. Nothing worthwhile without effort. 

So, the approach we need to take here, in my opinion is sort of a mentor driven curriculum. The mentee has to be committed to self study and a long term goal. Having mentored a few people through RailsMentors, most I've mentored are unfortunately not ready for that type of commitment.

At the end of the day, I think we have an (increasingly urgent) responsibility to reduce the frictions of becoming familiar and then adept with the framework. Maybe this starts simply with some members of the group putting together a track or list of resources as well as best practices. Provide a map, not a guided tour.

A wiki would work really well for this. As we do workshops, we could incorporate the workshop material into the wiki. The objective of the wiki would be to show a sequential progression from newb (MVC, Object oriented design, ruby fundamentals) to advanced (api architecture, scaling, etc)

I hope that helps (apologies for the length), and I'd be happy to take the lead on this if people think it's the right approach.

--
=========================
Dan Pickett
Principal
Enlight Solutions, Inc
http://EnlightSolutions.com

http://www.twitter.com/dpickett

[Susan McM. Tucker]

Hi All,

I am the "friend" mentioned in Greg's email. I have been pondering how to
become more accomplished at writing clean Ruby on Rails code. Getting from
'have done one complete project' to being able to 'be paid for creating
someone else's project' has felt like a significant hurdle.

The job postings for Rails developers use words like rockstar, ninja, expert
and I am not any of those things yet. Working on solving real business
problems, in what is to me a new language, is actually more often a problem
of knowing the right syntax. For me, I know what the code should do. I can
create workflow diagrams, and pseudo code to solve the problem. I just can't
right code that works! And sometimes knowing what the search term should be
is actually really hard. I suspect that the hurdles are different for each
late-n00bie.

Anyhow, I had this idea that a mentorship program could create a bridge from
late-n00b to advanced-intermediate.

For this to work, there would need to be a foundation of understandings. For
example, for a n00b to enter the program, perhaps they have to have written
at least one full, working app; or attended at least 6 months of boston.rb
meetings; or have a job in a company that is using Rails. [This is part of
what the group should discuss.] As I have reviewed tons of documents over
the past few days on how to set up a program like this, the term protégé is
used a lot for this person.

For a protégé/mentor relationship, I think there needs to be a time-frame.
Since it takes a certain amount of time to develop a relationship, including
shared vocabulary, I would think that a three-month commitment would make
sense. [Again, up for discussion.]

As to mentors, I think we would really be doing self-identification here
unless there is someone brave enough to categorize their peers.

And I really do think that mentors can be protégés as well.

So let's think about HOW this could work. I have this idea that we could
have a "bank" modeled on the old childcare bank-system that was popular
during the 1980's. Since so many of you were probably not paying attention
to Moms during the 1980's and so few of you are women, let me elaborate.
This model says that every time you watch someone else's kids you earn and
equal amount of time. So watching Child F for 3 hrs banks you 3 hrs, time
you can redeem from any other child-watcher in the group.

So, for every hour a mentor works with their protégé, they would bank that
time to receive mentoring from another mentor. The expectation would be that
every protégé would become a mentor in some aspect of Rails to balance out
their account. Sadly, this is the weakness of this proposal. It would be
really easy for a protégé to learn what they wanted, or decide that they
hate Rails and never give back. I would love to hear thoughts on how to
solve this. A program that has lots of takers who never give back will
definitely fail. Should the n00b-protégé be asked to do code grunt work for
their mentor, deposit a fee for participation that they can have returned
when they have given back, ... Or ?

I think that this idea has some merit and some complications. I am
personally willing to invest time into turning this idea into a real
program. I have experience with matching teaching/learning styles in real
life, and did so successfully for about 9 years.

However, I would need the help of the group at large to even create a
framework, and so I ask you, the community, does this idea have enough
validity to consider investing energy into making it a reality?

All the best,

*susan*

p r e t t y c o o l s o l u t i o n s
Susan McM. Tucker database and web design 617.694.1709

[Michael Breen]

It be nice the see the mentor program take less of a "be a great *Rails* developer" and more of a "be a great *Developer*" flavor. Technology fads come and go (remember ActiveX ;) but learning good fundamentals (OOP, debugging techniques, Patterns, etc) never goes out of style.

[Chris Maxwell]

Hi Susan,

Along your thinking, how about a place where an individuals mentor competencies and mentee needs (areas of interest) are listed. Individuals could then find each other and agree to mentor/collaborate: 1hr for 1hr. This way its an even and agreed upon exchange.

When I first started, Mat's course over at Sermo was awesome. Another idea might be to create a similar course that different members of the community contribute to. One week so-and-so teaches Active Record, another week someone else takes up a different area, but along along a defined path to rock stardom.

Chris

[Robby Grossman]

Judging by the response to Yifei's email a few weeks ago, I don't think there is much need for a currency system among mentors and proteges. There are a lot of great Rubyists who are happy to help out the newcomers without a qualified reward. Personally, I know I'm more motivated to help somebody who just asks for it.

A less formal way to kick this off would be for the less-experienced folks to attend the hackfests and simply ask for help or tutoring on whatever they're working on. I've gone to the hackfests when I can make it for about a year now, and I'm yet to see a single instance where somebody asked for help and was turned down.

--Robby

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Susan McM. Tucker <smtu...@prettycoolsolutions.com> wrote:

[Michael Breen]

[Apologies in advance for "crossing streams" Ghostbusters style ;)]

We've been trying to get a hackfest going outside the city[1] and I was wondering think about the idea if we dropped the name "hackfest"  for this new group (I'm getting the feeling that may be intimidating to newer folks) and called it a "study group", "tutoring group" or "support group"? Coders of all levels could show up with a problem or question for the group.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/boston-rubygroup/browse_thread/thread/1fb2c5eee9053e6

[Luke]

+1 Michael Breen:  as one who is further on the path of coding nirvana never tires of telling me, picking up a programming language or library is simple stuff.  Picking up the patterns, the bug-detection ability, the concepts is tough and takes thousands of mistakes.

+1 Chris Maxwell:  I was the colleague he swapped with, and Chris is both an excellent teacher and an excellent student.  I went from producing working sites that looked like crap but functioned (think in-house tools for my client's employees) to producing sites that like decent and function (think software that lives on the interwebs and seeks not only to perform but to seduce).

Random point:  did you know it's ridiculously easy to add Facebook share buttons and Google Analytics to your sites?  Both services generate custom code for you and you just paste it into application.html.erb.

⌘-c

⌘-v

Facebook!

 - Luke

[Dan Croak]

Agreed currency system not necessary to at least test idea in practice. Many people just help for their own internal reasons (feels good, need to "build the Farm League" of developers who will be future colleagues, employees, bosses, writers of open source code we all can use, etc.).

What if mentors declared themselves available at datetimes at a place of their choice? I'd be willing to set aside a few hours here and there at coffee shops near where I live. Protégés request to be scheduled for that mentor and time. Mentors accept or reject (might have multiple requests, life might interceed with family commitments, or other reasons, but no reason to avoid hard feelings).

Let the two who meet figure it out on their own, if they hit it off, they keep scheduling on their own?

"Protégé" > "Mentee"

[Dan Croak]

Good point, Mike. I'd love to be a jQuery protégé. It's be nice to not be boston.railsmentors.org but boston.mentors-proteges.org/developers.

[Wyatt Greene]

get rich quick scheme

Couldn't agree more.  Beginners need to have proper expectations.  Unless you already have a solid background in programming *and* web programming, there is no way you can become a *good* Rails developer in a matter of months.  It takes years.  The best proof of this is the economy.  Joblessness is very high, yet people have a hard time hiring *good* Rails developers.

On Jun 11, 2010, at 11:03 AM, Dan Pickett wrote:

[Brian Cardarella]

The system of mentors is done very well in the medical community. It
could be a model from which to draw ideas.

Medical school > Internship > Residency > Fellowship > Board
certification > Licensure > Continuing medical education

(clearly there is not a 1 to 1 match for developers)

- Brian

[Michael Breen]

On Jun 11, 2010, at 12:14 PM, Dan Croak wrote:

> What if mentors declared themselves available at datetimes at a place of their choice? I'd be willing to set aside a few hours here and there at coffee shops near where I live. Protégés request to be scheduled for that mentor and time. Mentors accept or reject (might have multiple requests, life might interceed with family commitments, or other reasons, but no reason to avoid hard feelings).

I really dig this idea. A simple calendar app where a mentor can input some time slots she/he is available and a location(s) where the mentor can be found.

[Joel Oliveira]

The coordination and logistics for this sounds like a perfect candidate for a portfolio app.  Or maybe a Rails Rumble app?

From my perspective I will own up to the fact that while my comfort with rails is fair,  my confidence and belief in having "expertise" is far from there.  Things like testing, metaprogramming, lower level concepts, are definitely things I just haven't broken through with yet.   On the flip-side, I feel like I know more than my fair share of client-side technology and would be more than happy trading my time on the "View" side of things for help with, say ... Rspec or Cucumber.

Just saying.  The trade of expertise idea is something I'm pretty excited about.

- Joel

[Neil Cook]

One failing which I see, even from job candidates with Masters degrees in Computer Science, is poor coding skills. I believe that at least part of the reason is a lack of practical experience with the language.

To some extent Ruby on Rails allows people to become Rails developers without learning good Ruby code writing practices. Just follow the examples in the books, on blogs etc. and you will be able to create a Rails application. It may look good and even work well but you may not have needed to write any Ruby code of any complexity. Where you are creating simple sites without noticeable business logic in them, you may be able to get away without this skill - but you are not becoming an expert, more an experienced practitioner.

The experienced practitioner, in a job, interview, may fail miserably at coding tests.

My suggestion is to create a github repository and get sample code reviewed by mentors. I have nothing against doing this in person but feel that this additional possibility would make the mentoring idea scale better. The mentor could provide sample problems to solve, but my favorite suggestion for coding tasks would be to carve off a piece of an open source project, which the mentor is working on, and have the candidate write some of the code. The code gets reviewed through the normal github patch pull mechanism and contributes to a worthy goal. I think that this could be a win for all parties.

Perhaps if we had a mechanism where people could advertise that they wanted to practice their skills in a particular area then mentors could pick people (maybe more than one) from that pool to solve a problem in the mentor's domain area.

Cheers,

/Neil

[James A. Rosen]

I would happily work on this for Rails Rumble. I have a fair bit of
experience working with the Ruby iCal library. I won't be in Boston
for Rails Rumble this year, but I'd love to pair remotely.

> >> On 6/10/10 10:37 PM, "sternicus" < <gsternd...@gmail.com>

[Tom Dyer]

I believe that one way to become proficient is by contributing to an
open source project, gem, whatever. There are just so many projects
out there and I think that with some investigation one should be able
to find an interesting project where one can hone one's skills, learn
and collaborate with others. Sometimes mentoring, sometimes being a
mentor, depending on the skill or domain. And you can always point to
you're contributions as examples of you're work.

I'm a big believer in doing, doing, doing. Tenacity in the face of
difficult problems, in my experience, is what forms the right pathways
and structures in the gray matter. This book, Pragmatic Thinking and
Learning http://bit.ly/dpooFG , talks about how skills and multiple
levels of mastery can be and are typically achieved. Also, there has
been a lot of writing lately about how the mind learns skills and a
lot of it points towards continuous focused practice.

> --
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--
Tom Dyer

[Liana]

I like the idea of a mentor driven curriculum, although I'm not sure
how you determine who is "committed". Perhaps Susan's criteria of
folks who have (a) written at least one full, working app; (b) or
attended at least 6 months of boston.rb meetings; or (c) have a job in
a company that is using Rails might be sufficient to weed out the "get-
rich-quick" folk. And having this criteria to enter "the program"
might encourage folks who have been simply dabbling to step up.

Developing a "structured" learning program sounds like a lot of work
but definitely something that could be marketed to draw in more folks
into the community.

p.s. Yes Michael please do get rid of the term 'Hackfest'. Boston.rb
Study Group, sounds soooo much more friendly and implies more work and
less 'fest'.

-Liana

[Ronald Cotoni]

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/boston-rubygroup

+1 to this. Saying Hackfest is slightly intimidating. It is cool but
at the same time when I think of a "Linux Hackfest" I think of people
getting together and porting drivers and other hardcore stuff.

[Victor Costan]

This discussion made me think of two different roles, both of which
are very useful, and much needed in my opinion.

My mentor would guide me at a very high level, and help me figure out
my direction in the Rails ecosystem. It wouldn't be a very big time
commitment. Examples:
* if I want to start working on a library, I would talk to my mentor
about it, so that he/she would tell me what similar libraries there
are out there, and help me figure out if it's worth building something
new
* my mentor would point out good books to read, good code to learn
from, and good libraries to contribute to (example: trying to
contribute to Rails was a very unpleasant experience for me; it
would've been nice for a mentor to tell me that I shouldn't try doing
that for a while)
* my mentor would connect me to other people in the Rails world that
share similar interests
I think a mentorship relationship, as I'm envisioning it, would be
valuable at any stage -- even a complete noob would benefit from being
pointed to stuff that matches their interests.

Once I have some decent knowledge of Rails (e.g., can build a small
application on my own), I would seek to become an apprentice for one
of the senior people in the community. As an apprentice, I would help
out my master (I know there should be a better word for this, but I
don't know it; if you do, pretend I used that word instead) with their
coding, in return for a low rate (I'm thinking $10/hr but I'm not good
with numbers). I think this works particularly well in the Rails
community, since most people have consulting arrangements. My master
would review my code, and point out to learning resources that I
should use to improve myself. Most importantly, after the review
process (possibly multiple iterations), my master would sign off on
the code, implying that it's as good as if they wrote it themselves.
The intention is that, after a few months, I would get to a level
where I can perform close to my master's level, and my master would
vouch for me.

I think it's important to break up the two, because of the different
time commitments. Mentorship can be benevolent, but it's important to
balance incentives correctly for the apprenticeship, since that's a
big time commitment for both parties involved.

Thoughts?
Victor

[Liana]

Here's the crux, Boston.rb is looking for more folks to bring into the
fold to grow the community.... and then you have newbies/intermediate
users who want to play with the cool kids but are sitting on the
sidelines, not really participating in the existing events. Why?

I think Boston.rb needs a little shaking up. Some new, compelling
reasons to participate.

In regards to mentorship, a structured program would take a bit of
work to set up, but is something you could market to a broader
community.

Dan, I'd like to hear more about your experiences with RailsMentors.
While I don't think anyone would argue that it takes work to become an
advanced rubyist, I'm not surprised to hear that some folks don't
follow through.

Sarah Allen and I had this conversation when I organized the Free
Workshop for Women last October. When you offer something "for free",
often it's not as valued.

So, I found Susan's idea above intriguing... that folks would need to
meet a certain criteria before entering the "mentor program". Might
there even be an application process? And perhaps as part of the
"cost of participation", a protege would need to make weekly
contributions back to open source to continue with the program.

Something like that might work to help get the "committed" users from
n00b to ninja. And perhaps excite the folks on the sidelines to
participate more so that they can eligible for the mentor program.

> > 2010/6/11 Maurício Linhares <mauricio.linha...@gmail.com>

[Liana]

Sorry all... I duplicated some of my thoughts because I thought my
other post didn't get through....

[Luke]

One thought on marketing something as "free":  just make it known up front that it's time-intensive and that will paint it as more valuable.  As we all know from a thousand kung-fu movies, one's full dedication and time is the costliest and most productive thing a skill can cost.

 - Luke

[Robby Grossman]

+1. I'm a big believer in Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule.

--Robby

[Daniel Higginbotham]

Recently I "hired" a guy I knew back in high school to work on one of my projects. He's written one Rails app, so he's not a complete noob. So far, the way we work is that I'll write out spec descriptions and cucumber stories for him and have him implement the actual spec bodies / step definitions, then get them passing. Along the way, I've been answering his questions and describing good practice for coding and for git collaboration. 

So far, I've really enjoyed the process. I pay him a bit, which I think is motivating him (he's essentially getting paid to learn).  He's been very enthusiastic so far, which makes me happy. Paying him is also very motivating for me, because I want to get him up to speed as quickly as possible. It's also a useful exercise for me because I have to explain a lot of things I don't normally have to, which clarifies my thinking. In the mean time, one of my projects is getting worked on :-)

This obviously wouldn't be right for everyone, but I just wanted to throw it out there as another possibility.

Daniel

p.s.

A thousand kung-fu movies? Sounds like you're well on your way to becoming a kung-fu movie master, in the Gladwell sense

"A journey of a thousand kung-fu movies begins with a single kung-fu movie" - Confucius

[Tom Dyer]

Now here is another form of mentoring that Gregory Brown is putting
together right now. The Ruby Mendicant University (RMU) ,
http://bit.ly/9n4D6m . Which is "a free online school designed to help
intermediate Ruby programmers master their craft. Each session would
include up to 20 or so participants and run for 3 weeks."

More info on this novel approach can be found on his blog at
http://seacreature.posterous.com/tag/rubymendicant

Gregory is a respected Rubyist and general good guy that's spoken at
the Boston Ruby Group a couple of times. He's made some great
contributions to the ruby community such as Prawn, Ruport and the Ruby
Best Practices book.

I believe that Gregory may have a solution for some of the concerns
stated above. Now, it may be too late or there may not be enough
openings in this RMU. But, I believe his approach and his and other's
toughts on this topic are at the very least valuable to this
conversation.

[Luke]

<aside>

I made a kung fu movie once.  The hero's name was Sum-yung Gai.  I was both the cameraman and all the voices.  We were able to achieve a nice dubbed quality simply by having the actors flap their mouths while I said all the lines.

</aside>

[Luke]

One point only:  I am absolutely delighted to be part of an industry where my skills are not easily classified and where "competence" is not well defined.  Let us relish this wild-west atmosphere while we dismantle it with well-designed certification programs.

That is all.

 - Luke

[Andrew Vargo]

I'd love to see this sort of thing as a workshop. I think I've about got the chops, but am not sure of the process so much. Like, how the heck do I use a local version of a gem for testing and tweaking? The general etiquette for the whole deal...

Also, lots of good stuff for getting dug in, but I am still curious - how do our 20+ experts gauge their expertise? Self-assement vs peers? Years in? Contributions? It was striking to me too that the expertise was both Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

-- Andrew

[Wyatt Greene]

This article may give some insight as to how to gauge expertise in
general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition

Years of experience is not a great indicator of skill. Neither is
your walking-style: http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/04/07/hiring-try-the-crowd-navigation-method/

[Braulio Carreno]

I recommend watching Yehuda Katz's keynote. Highly motivational,
related to this conversation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-lMdQMsdw
-- Braulio

On Jun 12, 3:05 pm, Wyatt Greene <techifer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This article may give some insight as to how to gauge expertise in  
> general:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition
>
> Years of experience is not a great indicator of skill.  Neither is  

> your walking-style:http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/04/07/hiring-try-the-crowd-n...

>
> On Jun 12, 2010, at 1:52 PM, Andrew Vargo wrote:
>
> > I'd love to see this sort of thing as a workshop.   I think I've  
> > about got the chops, but am not sure of the process so much.  Like,  
> > how the heck do I use a local version of a gem for testing and  
> > tweaking?  The general etiquette for the whole deal...
>
> > Also, lots of good stuff for getting dug in, but I am still curious  
> > - how do our 20+ experts gauge their expertise? Self-assement vs  
> > peers?  Years in?  Contributions?  It was striking to me too that  
> > the expertise was both Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
>
> > -- Andrew
>
> > On Jun 11, 2010, at 4:29 PM, Tom Dyer wrote:
>
> >> I believe that one way to become proficient is by contributing to an
> >> open source project, gem, whatever. There are just so many projects
> >> out there and I think that with some investigation one should be able
> >> to find an interesting project where one can hone one's skills, learn
> >> and collaborate with others. Sometimes mentoring, sometimes being a
> >> mentor, depending on the skill or domain. And you can always point to
> >> you're contributions as examples of you're work.
>
> >> I'm a big believer in doing, doing, doing. Tenacity in the face of
> >> difficult problems, in my experience, is what forms the right  
> >> pathways
> >> and structures in the gray matter. This book, Pragmatic Thinking and

> >> Learning  http://bit.ly/dpooFG, talks about how skills and multiple

[Rebecca Frankel]

I like the idea of mentors -- mostly because I could feel much happier about starting more ambitious things on my own if I knew there was someone I could ask if I encountered a killer bug. You can get books to hold your hand through  the process of building a basic system, but no book will help you with debugging. There are problems that experienced people can solve with one glance (because they've encountered them before) but might hold up a newbie for hours and hours. For me the really uncomfortable part of being new at something isn't writing the first project (because there are tutorials for that) but sleuthing out the first few big bugs.

Rebecca

[Phil Darnowsky]

> As an apprentice, I would help out my master (I know there should be
> a better word for this, but I don't know it; if you do, pretend I
> used that word instead)

IIRC in the medical field the term for an experienced doctor who supervises a medical student in the clinic is a "preceptor," which sounds kind of cool. But whatever we were to call it, "master" is definitely too loaded a word.

> with their
> coding, in return for a low rate (I'm thinking $10/hr but
> I'm not good
> with numbers).

This is a good idea in general, but I think it'd be important in this program to commit to paying a living wage. Although I don't have the exact number to hand, in Boston that's probably somewhat over $10/hour.

[Keenan Brock]

Mentor/protege seems all about learning and backup.

  I want to share my expertise

  I want to learn from an expert.

  I want to take a job and have backup.

Personally, I don't need to prove my knowledge. I know what I know, don't know, and what I'll never know.

I agree with Dan: Personalities and availability are very important here.

Personally, it is not about money. But maybe money would help make this sustainable.

I could learn from a beginner. Just so that they are patient and knew more than I. Seems like this could be solved by a study group like situation as well.

Certification is different. It is about getting a job, setting a course, proving yourseld. More formal and more about a resume.

I wonder if the goals of the two are different enough that we shouldn't overlap the two conversations. (e.g. Have qualifications for a mentor. Or have others vouch for a mentor)

--Keenan

[Phil Darnowsky]

What if we started a tradition of "office hours" on IRC or Skype or whatnot? Basically, some of the experienced developers here commit to making themselves available online at certain regular times, and novices with questions know that at those times there's someone they can ask for advice.  This is clearly less structured than a mentorship program, but I believe that many n00bs would find this helpful in their development--particularly if the experienced programmers take a Socratic approach that leads to the novice figuring things out for themselves, guided by leading questions from the teacher. --Phil --- On Sat, 6/12/10, Rebecca Frankel <rfra...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

[Dan Pickett]

I *love* the idea of office hours for this. I was considering doing it anyhow for business reasons.

I've been checking out http://www.formspring.me/ as a potential tool to help with it.

=========================
Dan Pickett
Principal

[Wyatt Greene]

+1.

[Phil Darnowsky]

Formspring is a pretty neat idea, but I know from experience that there are two possible problems with using it for something serious: (1) The software is (or at least was) flaky.  Long downtimes for part or all of the functionality aren't uncommon. (2) There's, IIRC, a character limit (200 maybe?) on questions, which makes it hard to ask something complex.  Of course, we could use pasties as a workaround. --Phil --- On Sat, 6/12/10, Dan Pickett <dan.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dan Pickett]

good to know - thanks Phil! I had only just played with it. Campfire, IRC, wave would work just as well too. 

[Tom Dyer]

I do understand the frustration of dealing with killer bugs. But, I
also value the work of trying to solve killer bugs. And I do believe
that the pain and frustration associated with learning may, just may,
eventually make us better at what we do.

I've found it to be a valuable experience and practice to track down,
at least, the cause of a killer bug. Of course, I also enjoy solving
the bug, like the feeling, but I'm thinking that's not where most of
the value of this type of exercise comes from.

To me, it's about tenacity and practice. The tenacity to not give up
and the practice it takes to learn how to best solve problems in
general. I really can't count how many times I've just jumped into the
source for gems and all kinds of Ruby code. Usually, after some
googling: google results and these kinds of forums are my some of my
most valuable mentors.

Ruby is, generally, so much more readable and open than any other
language I've used. And demanding to understand some wonderfully
crazy new idiom in code, concept or the cause of a killer bug has just
taught me so much. It just pisses me off when I come across something
I think I can't, at least initially, understand. And it's seems that
the most difficult and frustrating problems have taught me the most.

--
Tom Dyer

[Liana]

So this has been a very lively topic, with lots of opinions and good
ideas. Perhaps a committee could be formed amongst those who are
willing to invest some time into getting something formal put
together?

Once something is organized, it would be really nice to advertise it
broadly to engage those rubyists who have been hanging out on the
fringe. Perhaps Boston.rb can kick it off with a larger event of some
sort... lots of ideas. Let's get together and talk.

Best,
Liana