The full program

This is an audio program. Listen and/or download it here:

A few lessons from this program

Have you ever gone to hire a web developer and realized that you don’t even know what the programming languages mean, let alone how to pick the right one?

In the interview I recorded with Obie Fernandez, he explains the main web development languages and how to pick the right one. Obie is a pioneering Rails developer, the author of The Rails Way, and founder and CEO of Hashrocket, which is a leader in Ruby on Rails web application development.

Here’s an edited excerpt from our conversation.

Andrew: What’s “Ruby”?

Obie: Ruby is a general-purpose programming language that you can use to write anything. People over the years have used it for automating on servers and batch jobs and all sorts of things.

What is “Ruby on Rails”?

Rails is a web framework. It was started by David Heinemeier Hansson. He started working for Jason Fried at 37 Signals who wanted to build a management product called Basecamp.

David said, “I’m going to write it in Ruby.”

And Jason said, “I don’t care what you write it in. You know best.”

David liked Ruby and started writing in it. And he did a very important thing. He took the stuff that wasn’t specific to Basecamp and he open sourced it as Ruby on Rails. So basically, all this stuff that was generally applicable to web apps he put out there for other developers to use.

Could you use an analogy to make it clearer?

I would liken Rails to a provider of kit car parts. Things are provided to you so you can snap them together and make arbitrarily complex vehicles.

This is just an excerpt. The full program also also covers:

• What is PHP, ASP.NET, Java, etc?
• Which language is right for your startup?
• How to find your tech co-founder.
• What Obie bought with the royalty check from his book.

[Thank you Jonathan Nelson for helping Mixergy by suggesting this interview. I'll tell everyone to help you with your new site, TwitterMass.]

Your turn. In the comments, let me know if you want to see more programs like this about development or if you’d rather see Mixergy stick with business issues.
-