Favorite

I don’t live near many rubyists.

Having spent my Ruby/Rails career in remote Montana and then in remote Cornwall (UK), I have been very lucky to craft and create software while enjoying being removed from the city life. I also get to work for a small, flexible company. The trade off? Almost all of my ‘Ruby’ networking and community has had to come from web-accessible resources.

I recently spoke at Isle of Ruby(which will get its own post soon). This topic came up with some there. Following further discussions I decided to publish my favorite ruby resource for those of you in a similar position.

This list is by no means comprehensive and changes all the time, but it’s the sort of thing I wish I had access to from day one. Without further adieu….

A few of my favorite (ruby) things

  • I post generally useful things I come across and ‘do not want to forget’ (i.e. more than a bookmark) on my page here: https://schwad.github.io/reading-list/

Podcasts

  • The Bikeshed (Derek Prior, Sean Griffin and friends - very fun)
  • Ruby Rogues (Possibly the longest running one, medium-technical)
  • The Art of Product (Ben Orenstein and Derek Reimer, both big Rubyists, often talk far beyond Ruby and about their careers)
  • The Ruby on Rails Podcast (Brittany Martin and Kyle Daigle and guests, very very enjoyable)
  • Giant Robots Smashing into Other Giant Robots (Put out by Thoughtbot - I used to listen to this a lot but it has gotten less and less Ruby based)
  • Ruby5 (This was discontinued in 2016 but is great if you want to hear about the past, with 5 minute quick Ruby community updates)

Newsletters/Blogs:

  • RubyWeekly. This is my bible. If I listen to or read nothing else I always read this. I remember the first time they shared a post of mine on here and I felt like a hero!
  • RubyTapas by Avdi Grimm - he also runs several newsletters including one called ‘Brunch’
  • Schneems! Really nice guy and big contributor, has a blog and newsletter. Very helpful stuff for me from community perspective
  • Aaron Patterson - He doesn’t write here much but as one of the big names his writings are great
  • Jesus Castello
  • Andy Croll (who organizes Brighton Ruby Conf)
  • Drifting Ruby - they are releasing pro-only videos sometimes now but this is my favorite screencast-er with weekly updates on really interesting stuff and I find it incredibly useful. One of the hosts of Ruby Rogues does this
  • Finally Code Triage. Seriously, it really helped me go from ‘I never have done any open source help’ to making it a habit. I just get random notifications about old PRs and Issues and I read them. If they need a ‘bump’ I kindly write ‘Hey what’s happening here?’. And once in a while I can actually help from the technical perspective.

Missing anything?

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I like to write about Ruby and building things, typically once every month or so. Get an email when I have written something new.