This fall, I have been taking the “Rails for Designers” class at Starter League. Many people have asked me why, and I had a trite (but true) answer that “I want to be able to build things again!” I was a developer years ago, my first company was a custom software shop and on day-one I was President, Janitor, Lead Developer and everything in between. I loved being a maker!
As time wore on, I spent more time managing and less time making. Then technology changed, I was so busy with the “business side” of businesses, getting further and further away from being able to understand any modern languages.
This fall, I have learned Ruby on Rails. Be clear, I am not ready to hang out a shingle and start coding for a living, but I can actually build robust database backed applications again and it feels great.
But more important is that I am able to help our Excelerate companies in a way that I have not been able to before. No, I am not debugging code or writing new features, but twice in the last week, I have been able to help non-technical CEO’s get to the bottom of what the real issues are in their applications. I understand the Model-View-Controller architecture, how good applications should be structured, how they are breaking and what is causing it. More importantly, what the trade-offs are of the various approaches to fixing it.
I have always said that the most valuable skill I have is being able to bridge business and technology –being comfortable talking about cash flows and balance sheets with investors and talking about object-oriented design and data normalization with the developers. Now I have a much deeper understanding of what developers are doing and how they are doing it. Now, I am a stronger business person because of it!
Now you understand the real reason I have taken this class, and hopefully see that it is paying dividends already. There are only a few days left to apply for the Winter quarter of The Starter League, maybe you should consider it. Sunday December 2nd is the deadline!
