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It is my pleasure to introduce this morning's keynote speaker, Saron Yitbarek. Saron is a Ruby developer, podcaster, founder of Code Newbie, and creator of Not a Designer, a newsletter for developers wanting to level up their design skills. She's also a mother and an international keynote speaker, and she's excited to be here today. Welcome!
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Good morning, everyone! I am so pumped to be here. This is my first RubyConf in a number of years; basically, since the pandemic. I'm actually from San Diego, so it is a special joy to have all your beautiful faces here in my little hometown. Thank you so much for coming out today. My talk is called "Our Superpower," and I’m going to start it with a little video.
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I think that people often think about programming and code and believe that you have to be kind of half machine to be able to do it. But I think that programming is way more about people than about machines. It shares much more with expression, writing, art, and music than it does with math, and that's why everyone can learn it. It's easier to connect to a topic if you are telling it in terms of a story or a narrative. As humans, we really love stories, so it’s not just about getting up there and lecturing, saying this is a method and this is an array. It's really about trying to create a story out of these technologies.
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The point of technology isn't just to help ourselves; it's to help others. This means you need a diverse and vibrant economy. The more people who graduate from our programs, the more it's going to inspire others to realize what their lives can be, that they really can do and create everything they've ever wanted to do. There are thousands of ways to write a program, and in each of those little differences are our individuality, and we want to celebrate that.
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You know, the hard part about programming isn't how good you are as a coder; it's how good you are as a person. After our students get hired and we talk to their employers, they often ask us, 'Where did you find such great developers?' The answer is that we didn't find great developers; we found really great people, and we taught them how to code.
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I love that video. I remember first seeing it and watching it over and over again. See, I had been learning how to code; I quit my job, dedicating my days, evenings, and weekends to learning how to code. I found the Flatiron School's pre-work curriculum and was working my way through it. When things weren't clicking, when the code disobeyed, and when I felt stupid, incapable, and helpless, I watched that video. It was the first time code had been presented to me as art, as something human; it had a soul, and I needed code to have a soul.
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You see, this wasn't the first time I was trying to learn to code; this was the second. The first attempt happened two years prior and was an absolute disaster. I had been working at a tech startup as a non-technical person, doing marketing and sales. I looked over the shoulders of the engineers, trying to decipher the symbols on their screens. They looked like English letters and words, but they made no sense. I was confused and intrigued, so I looked up how to learn computer programming and came across this: the old MIT OpenCourseWare website, a free repository of MIT's courses available for anyone to watch.
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These courses weren't designed for remote, asynchronous learning the way that MOOCs (massive open online courses) of today are. They were filmed with a camera in the back of the room, hit record, and uploaded whatever you got to the internet. It was an important first step in bringing high-quality education to the masses, but back then, the experience as a student watching them was terrible. It wasn't just that there was all this assumed knowledge built into the course, or that the professor was writing on a blackboard instead of typing into an IDE. It was the simple fact that I didn't know how to learn computer science.
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See, I'd been pre-med, and I took it very seriously. I taught organic chemistry, conducted biochemistry research, and even published a paper on RNA detection methodologies. I'd done hard things, but coding was different, and I didn't have a good process to approach it. I tried to learn to code the way I learned biology—by memorizing everything. I used to create these flashcards of code snippets and tried to commit everything to memory. The professors on my screen never used a computer to code, so neither did I. I used index cards and notebooks; I did my best, but that toolset just wasn't cutting it.
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I found myself confused and overwhelmed, but the dangerous part was how that experience alone at night at the dining room table made me see myself as stupid and incapable. I thought I couldn’t do this; my brain just wasn't wired this way. I believed coding was not for me. I put away my flashcards and stashed away my big dreams. Two years passed, and I was stuck.
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I was working at a tech startup that was going nowhere. We were in education, and I had been project managing the development of a learning platform for our students. Because I wasn't technical, I had a really hard time. The idea of trying to learn to code again had teased me over the years, but I mostly pushed it away out of fear. However, project managing that piece of software was the last straw. If only I knew how to code, how products were built, this would be so much easier.
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So, I decided to try again, but this time would be different. This time, I would do better research, pick better tools, and use better resources. I gave myself one month to figure it out—a month of full-time dedicated coding before I was allowed to quit. If I got through that month and still felt it wasn't for me, then fine, I could walk away knowing I’d tried. But I couldn't quit before the month was over, and it was in that promise to myself to keep going and find the right tools that I came across the Flatiron School.
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They helped me believe that maybe I could do this, that maybe this was for me. I think we’ve all experienced these moments of self-doubt in our coding journeys. Maybe yours was at the beginning when you were shiny and new and everything felt big and scary, or maybe it happened a few years later when suddenly you had responsibilities and people expected you to have answers to their coding questions.
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Maybe it was a decade into your career when you found yourself leading a team, wondering how on earth you got yourself into that situation. It's in these moments of self-doubt that we need each other the most. It’s when we really get to witness the power of community. That wasn't the last time I would doubt myself as a developer or a technologist, but it was the last time I felt alone.
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By picking Ruby as my language of choice, I joined this beautiful community of some of the smartest and kindest developers in tech. They welcomed me with open arms, gave me space to find my voice, and gently pushed me forward when that self-doubt came creeping in. What makes a language is way more than what we can build with it; it's also about who we build up, what values we live by, and how we share the love of our language with everyone else.
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I've been a Rubyist for almost a decade. It's the first language I learned, the one I know best, and a community I’m most proud to be a part of. It's been an interesting journey being a Ruby developer for ten years. I learned Ruby on Rails in 2013. If you were already a developer in 2013 and knew about the language and the framework, you knew how popular it had already become. It wasn't the new kid anymore; it had been around the block.
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Startups were using it; big products like Shopify and GitHub were already up and running proudly built on Ruby on Rails. It felt like we were mainstream. But to someone new to tech entirely, I didn't have any of this context. I didn’t know about Mats in 1993—fun fact, if you didn’t already know, Ruby was almost called Coral before it ended up being Ruby. I didn't know about DHH's blog demo of 2005; I didn't know about the history of the language or the framework.
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I didn’t know how productive it could make me or how much joy it would bring. I couldn't compare it with the pros and cons of other languages. I didn’t pick Ruby because of the strength of the technology or the pragmatism of it. I was too new to appreciate these things; I didn’t even know they mattered. I picked Ruby because of the people I knew.
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Learning a new language was going to be hard; I learned my lesson from the first time I tried, and I was determined that this time would be different. I wanted to have resources and support while I learned. I wanted a community to lean on and ask for help. I wanted to know that I would be welcomed by a group of people who were kind and giving. I picked Ruby because as an outsider looking in, I could see how alive, engaged, and supportive the Ruby community was.
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I started at the Flatiron School in the fall of 2013 and experienced the community I was looking for in the classroom, amongst my peers and my teachers. They say that culture is set at the top, and at the top of our little culture was the Dean, AI Flom. The voice of that video, AI, had been a programmer for years. He knew a number of languages, had worked as a developer, a CTO, started his own tech company, taught one of the most popular Ruby on Rails courses online, and he was now the co-founder and Dean of the Flatiron School.
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I trusted his expertise, but what really shone through was what couldn't be put on a resume: his deep love of the Ruby language. He didn't just teach us how to code; he taught us why. In his poignant guide to Ruby, he introduced us to the magic of Ryan Bates and his Rails casts. He shared with us Matt's niceness, and so we were nice. He brought in incredible developers from the community to inspire us.
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He didn't have to do these things; he could have just focused on the curriculum and stuck to the code, only the code. But it was important to him that we weren't just coders; we were community members. Community members share, we write, we teach, we support, we give back, and we care. AI didn't just teach us how to code; he taught us how to love the act of coding.
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If a lot of this lovey-dovey talk is lost on you, I completely understand. After all, we're not paid to care; we're paid to code. We get our salaries based on our output, our productivity. But I think love for what we do is an undervalued superpower. It's a tool towards the productivity that our managers and CEOs want from us.
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Being a developer who derives genuine joy and pleasure from coding is a competitive advantage. It's much easier to work hard on something you love. It's more likely that you'll upskill and improve out of interest and curiosity. When you love what you're learning, you want to be good; you want to be better. You don’t need incentives or external motivation; you do it just because.
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When you spread this love of a language to all the members of that language, you create something truly magical. You create a community of not just coders but of givers that goes beyond what we build. A few months later, I would witness the same kindness and love beyond my little boot camp and into my coding career when I joined the broader Ruby community. If you've been a Rubyist for a while, you may know the name James Edward Gray.
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I first interacted with James on Twitter when he came across a blog post I had written that incorrectly attributed his slides to Mat's. In my defense, the source I had gotten the content from had the wrong attribution. He reached out to say that he enjoyed my post. We shared a few tweets back and forth, and in the process of reading my article, he checked me out and asked me to be on his podcast. His show was the then very popular Ruby Rogues. I was just a few months out of boot camp, too new to appreciate how iconic this podcast was, but I knew it was an honor to be asked to be on anyone's stage at that point in my career.
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I was excited and incredibly nervous. I don't remember much about the episode, but I remember doing well enough that they asked me to come back as a guest panelist. I have a rule where I have to say yes to as many opportunities as I can. Especially back then, when I had zero obligations and could actually say yes to most opportunities. Fear was never a good reason to say no. I was scared; I was nervous, but I accepted.
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We used Skype to host the panel, and week after week, I would join this room and sweat bullets. I was on a panel with incredible coders, with the Ruby Rogues, with developers who had decades of experience. I was just getting started! Who was I to dare sit with them? Who was I to ask anyone questions about anything, let alone Ruby? So I'd sit on that panel, drenched in nerves and self-doubt, trying to follow the conversation, barely hanging on, trying to find a place to squeeze in a question, fighting the urge to run and hide.
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I don't think I did a very good job, at least not at the beginning. But James and the other panelists didn’t give up on me. They didn’t throw me in the deep end or put me on the spot or take back their offer. They gently told me that maybe this wasn't working out. They knew my position; they understood that I was new to the industry but also saw my passion for coding, teaching, and helping others. They recognized I had the potential to be a good podcaster; I just needed a little time and a gentle nudge.
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I remember getting private messages on episodes where I was particularly quiet for too long from Sam Livingston Gray, one of the panelists, reading, 'Don't be shy; you got this!' It was gentle but firm. It took a while for me to believe them, for me to find my own place on that panel, to take that mic and ask those questions. And when I did, they cheered me on and celebrated me. Less than a year later, I would launch my own podcast, the Code Newbie podcast, with the incredible support of the Ruby Rogues panelists.
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I remember asking them for feedback on my concept, my intro, and my interview questions. They didn't view me as a competing podcast; they saw my fire and my passion and wanted to support me. Code Newbie launched while I was still a panelist, and they let me talk about my little podcast on their show. They asked me questions about it, tweeted about it, and helped spread the word. They, like so many in the Ruby community, were givers. They gave freely without keeping score; it was in their nature. I'll never forget the kindness these experienced Rubyists showed to this kid, this newcomer who was terrified yet eager to prove herself as a shiny new dev.
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They set the standard of what it meant to be a Rubyist: how we are more than what we build; we are who we build up. Around that time, I started doing Twitter chats. I had known firsthand how lonely it can be to learn to code without the support of a boot camp or a room full of peers. I knew how hard it was to push through when you’re staring at a bug with no one to save you, wondering how you’re ever going to figure this one out. It was painful, and I wanted to help people in that situation find their community.
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So I started these Twitter chats every Wednesday night at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. I would use the hashtag #CodeNewbie and post questions to answer questions like 'What language are you learning?' and 'Where are you stuck?' and 'What are you building?' It was a beautiful way to have a scalable conversation with hundreds of people all at the same time. I was providing a safe space for people who were eager, new, but felt alone. I was creating a gathering place for people to come together and share what they were learning and who they were. I was spreading that love of coding that was so ingrained in me from my boot camp days.
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About six months after launching that Twitter chat, I launched the podcast, a show that still continues to this day. We've produced over 300 episodes with millions of downloads and have helped many people feel a little more inspired and a little less lonely on their coding journey. I worked on Code Newbie, building it into a community and then a media company part-time for the first three years while working as a developer and then running a technical training program at Microsoft. It was at that time that I first became a speaker and was introduced to the world of community through Ruby conferences.
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My first talk was called "Reading Code Good," and it was all about the importance of reading code. A few of my boot camp friends and I had all gotten together after the program was over and started a reading group, but instead of reading books, we read code. We'd find small Ruby libraries and try to make sense of them, putting our knowledge to the test and trying to grow as developers. It was a great way to level up and become better acquainted with the Ruby language. A few months into doing this reading club, the RailsConf CFP was announced, and I wanted to give a talk.
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I racked my brain for ideas, but the only idea I could come up with was the story of my little reading group and the power of reading and learning together. It was an interesting topic to me, but who was I to know if it would be interesting to other developers, particularly those who attend conferences? Uncertain, and once again full of doubt, I turned to someone I looked up to, Vanessa Hurst, co-founder of Girl Develop It.
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She was hosting a co-working session at a coffee shop, and I attended. It was there that I shared my idea about reading code and she loved it. She was this experienced programmer who founded a national nonprofit helping women get into tech. If she thought it was good, there must be something to it. But then I said, 'Vanessa, I've never given a talk, let alone a tech talk. Isn’t it better that I start with a local meetup, maybe try some smaller conferences, work my way up to RailsConf at some point later down the line when I have some more experience?'
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To which Vanessa firmly said no. I don't believe in stepping stones. That would be a saying I would revisit time and time again in my own coding career. Whenever I'd be flooded with doubt, whenever my confidence would shake, when I felt the urge to make myself smaller and disappear into the background, I would hear Vanessa’s voice, and I too would not believe in stepping stones. I swallowed my fear and submitted my talk for consideration.
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A few months later, I got this email from Marty hot at Ruby Central letting me know that my talk was accepted. I remember reading that email on a long train ride back home, and to the concern of the two little old ladies sitting in front of me, I laughed in delight and then burst into tears. I couldn't believe that I would get to speak at RailsConf. My talk was not rooted in my dominance of a language or a framework; I did not have the expertise of a Sandy Metz to command the stage with the same authority. I was still new, still shiny and wide-eyed, but the community took me in, welcomed me with open arms.
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Arms that would launch my speaking career. I would go on to keynote tech conferences in different languages and frameworks all over the world. But there was one conference that really stood out where I first met a Ruby community member who would end up being not just a role model but a friend. I had been invited to speak at Bath Ruby 2015; it was a conference in an absolutely stunning space. I still remember the gorgeous chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the depth of the hall, and the commanding stage.
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I was there to give my "Reading Code Good" talk—a talk I'd been invited to give over a dozen times. Speaking alongside me was Katrina Owen; I'd first been introduced to her as a panelist on Ruby Rogues, and we had gotten to know each other as fellow podcasters. But that was the first time we met in person. She was giving a talk called "Here Be Dragons," a video game-themed talk detailing her adventures finding and destroying bugs. It was a little too advanced for my skill level at the time; I could barely follow along. But even without understanding the details, I could tell that she was a phenomenal speaker and an incredible developer.
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She had this way of captivating the audience and commanding the stage that was incredible to watch. We hung out during that conference and became true friends. But it was what she created off stage that spoke to her as a community member. See, in 2013, the same year I'd become a developer, Katrina had started a project called Exorcism. It was a way to practice coding through crowdsourced code reviews and what she lovingly called nitpicks.
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It was a project that came from love and a genuine desire to give back. She wanted to help people level up in a way that was high impact and driven by community. She worked on Exorcism as a team for years before making it an official nonprofit and bringing on a team. Now it reaches over a million developers a month looking to improve and sharpen their skills. During those same early years, she co-authored a book with Sandy Metz called "99 Bottles of OOP," giving her a different avenue of sharing her love of coding and helping people level up.
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Katrina has a deep love for solving intricate and interesting problems, with the skills to match. She was beyond my skill level and far ahead in her career. It would have been easy for her to brush me off, a newcomer to the space; to tell me to earn my spot, to wait my turn, to use her expertise to gatekeep and keep me small. But that's not what she did because that's not what we do.
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Even with her years of experience and technical chops, she treated me like a peer. She gave me her time, her respect, and then her friendship, and for that, I am truly grateful. I never knew Sandy Metz as well, but a little while later, I would launch another podcast called the Ruby Book Club Podcast. It was a show where my best friend Nadia Odono, founder of the StoryGraph, and I would read a section of a Ruby book and then discuss it on the show. One of the books we read was "99 Bottles of OOP," and when we finished reading it, we asked Sandy and Katrina to join us and talk about it.
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They graciously did. Around that time, Sandy was hosting an in-person workshop in New York City on OOP, and I was able to attend. This was not a beginner workshop; it was intermediate to advanced, and because it was a workshop, there was little time to catch your breath. I had already read the book and frankly remembered a lot of the answers, but sitting there in that classroom with 30 other very advanced Ruby developers led by the one and only Sandy Metz was the perfect recipe for self-doubt to come flooding in.
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I could follow along, but I found myself relying more on memory than on understanding, and I was intimidated. I knew that if I hadn't already read that book, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep up. The workshop lasted a few days, and near the end of that last day, Sandy stopped by where I was sitting and asked how it was going. I told her how I was feeling, and while I can't remember what she said, I remember her warmth and her genuine caring about how I was doing, about whether I understood, whether she did a good job explaining.
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This was the beloved Sandy Metz, beloved for a reason. She was the queen of object-oriented programming, a renowned speaker, an author, and an accomplished developer. It would have been easy for her to give me a little smile and move on with her class; she could have puffed up her chest with her credentials and her expertise and made me feel small in return, but she didn't do that. Because that's not what we do. She took her time to listen, to respond to little old me with my little book club podcast and my love of Ruby.
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When I think about one of my programming heroes, Dave Thomas is an easy one to name. One of the creators of the Agile Manifesto, a lover of Ruby, author of the famous Pickaxe book, and creator of the Pragmatic Bookshelf—he’s an incredible programmer with a full plate. But what I love most about Dave is that if you email him, no matter who you are, no matter how important you are or where you’re from, Dave will email you back.
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I first met Dave when we both spoke at Lone Star Ruby in 2015. I’d been coding for less than two years and was sharing the keynote stage with him. I remember he brought his gentle dog, and we became acquainted. We didn’t spend much time together at the conference, but afterwards, we kept in touch. He reached out about a blog post I’d written, then later I invited him onto the Code Newbie podcast. On occasion, we'd find ourselves at the same conferences. Dave always made time for me, though I’d done nothing that even came close to the incredible technical work he’d accomplished.
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He always made me feel valued, like I belonged. He does indeed respond to every email. I would share ideas for projects with him, tell him what was going on with Code Newbie, and he would always be there, ready to listen, support, and make me feel seen. He welcomed me into the Ruby community with open arms and helped me find my place here. And then, in 2019, I got a message from him asking me to write the foreword to the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Pragmatic Programmer.
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I was shocked! By this point, I’d accomplished a bit more in my career; I’d been working on Code Newbie full-time and turned it into a proper business. I’d produced successful podcasts as well as an annual conference called Codeland. But still, my work and expertise had been centered around building community and helping newer developers feel at home. I didn’t have the open-source contributions or the CTO chops of many more qualified people in our industry, so I felt unworthy of such an honor.
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I asked Dave, 'Why me, when so many others are far more qualified?' Dave said, 'Silly you, I asked you because you’re not a CTO or senior developer. I asked you because you care about people and improving their lives. I asked you because you represent everything good about what at times can be a somewhat toxic industry. I asked you because I hope that some of your magic will rub off.' The Pragmatic Programmer isn't about being a senior anything; it's about being a human being doing a complex, ever-changing job. It would have made perfect sense to pick a more technically accomplished person for the foreword, but we are more than just our code.
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Dave saw that he believed it was about people and who we were as a community. He displayed those values in how he treats others and how he treated me—with warmth and kindness, and for that, I am grateful. It was around this time that my career was going in a slightly different direction but would still find its way back to Ruby. You see, around that time, Code Newbie was acquired by Dev, then rebranded to Forum. I'd been doing it full-time for three years, and it was time to move on to something new. I founded my own company, Disco, a platform for paid audio courses on technical topics.
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I wanted to test the idea first, so I did a pre-launch for a discounted price. You could listen to our highly produced audio courses and level up as a technologist. I sent out a few tweets, emailed people on my personal mailing list, and in three weeks, I had almost 500 users. I was pumped! Now I needed to hire producers to create the courses. Since I was a Rubyist, I could build the web app on my own, no problem. So I went out to raise a pre-seed round of $500,000.
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I gave myself three months to raise as much of that as I could. This was late 2020, during the height of the pandemic, back when Clubhouse--remember them?--were huge, and audio was the space to be. That, combined with my already having had an acquisition under my belt, put me in a good place to raise my first round. I knew I was in a good position, but I was unprepared for the demand. In two months, I started with a goal of $500,000 and ended up with commitments of $3.4 million.
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But taking in all that money meant giving up a ton of equity. So after all the negotiations were said and done, I raised a little over $2 million from top investors. Now the real work began. I hired producers, I built that web app, and I hired mobile developers to build the mobile app. In a few months, we had content, we had a product, and I proudly sent it out to my eagerly awaiting customers.
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And what did I hear back? Nothing. No one downloaded the app. No one hit play. Okay, a few people did, but most did not. I was confused. Weren’t they eagerly awaiting my brand new product? Turns out, no they weren’t. My beloved little app didn’t solve a problem for these people; it was an aspirational purchase like a gym membership. They liked the idea of learning professional content through audio, but when it came down to it, they would always choose music or a fun podcast over Disco.
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It was a painful lesson to learn, but I was a Rubyist, and I knew that I could easily pick up a different idea, whip something up, and build out a different concept. It's a strange problem to have—a failed startup idea but still having all this investment money. I told my investors what happened, and with their blessing, I used the opportunity to pivot into something else. For a long while, that’s what I tried to do, conducting hundreds of user interviews, validating tons of ideas, and using my Ruby and product skills to quickly and efficiently iterate. It was a painful and frustrating journey.
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They say that having an idea is the easy part, but I found that having an idea that people actually want, let alone pay for, is a whole different ball game. So a few months ago, I decided to try a new strategy entirely. Instead of picking a problem space and trying to learn about it through interviews and research, I decided to become the user and experience problems and pain points firsthand.
00:43:06.920
I've always been fascinated by the newsletter space and wanted to do something there, so I decided to become a newsletter creator myself. I started a newsletter of my own called Not a Designer, where I write about design concepts for a developer audience. Design is a topic I’ve always loved and wanted to dive deeper into. If you're interested, you're welcome to check it out!
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Over the years of working on Disco and trying to find the right idea to work on, the lure of other technologies has been tempting. I'm constantly wondering whether I should deep dive into the latest language or hot new framework. I'm in a perpetual state of FOMO, wondering if it's time for me to move on to a shiny new toy. In my recent years, I must admit, I've been nervous as a Ruby developer. The world keeps telling us that we’re going away, that we’re going out of style, and yet here we all are.
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I still write Ruby, I still love Ruby, and since you’re sitting here, chances are so do you. But what I've loved seeing throughout these years of doubt is how focused Ruby has been on leading with fixes, with performance improvements, and with love. With all the noise going on in the tech world, we’re still here. We’re getting better, we’re getting stronger, and we’re building our tools and building up our language.
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I’ve been hearing more recently that we are in a Renaissance. I like that idea—the idea of a rebirth, a fresh start, a second coming. But as a pragmatic programmer, I have to contend with the possibility that maybe we’re not. Maybe Ruby’s heyday is over, and we’re more of a smaller niche language now. What does that mean for me? What does that mean for you?
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I don’t code in Ruby because it’s fashionable; I don’t code in Ruby because it’s the latest language or the most revolutionary. I code in Ruby because I love it, and maybe more importantly, because I love the people. It’s the kindness and openness of the community that’s kept me here, that’s kept me wanting to come back and be kind and open to others.
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It’s the many people I’ve looked up to who never look down on me, who instead offered support, pushed me when that’s what I needed, gave me their time and attention, and offered opportunities. That makes me even more excited to be here, to stay here. It’s what they did because that’s what we do. Whatever our place ends up being in the larger tech landscape, I hope we never lose what makes us who we are—kind, giving technologists who make space for others.
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Because it was the many kind, giving technologists who made space for me that got me here today. Love for our community members, for our language, for the art of coding is who we are. Love is our superpower. Thank you!
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I want to do two quick plugs before I leave. AI Flom, the Dean of the Flatiron School, is looking for new opportunities in product and mentorship, so if you're interested, this is his info. And if you are interested in checking out the newsletter, this is the QR code that'll take you there. Thank you so much for your time!
