Big Nerd Ranch recently sent Brian Gardner and me to the Railsberry Conference in Krakow, Poland. Having been to several Rails conferences already, I expected some technical talks, Agile process talks, and the requisite talk on refactoring.
Since joining Big Nerd Ranch in April 2011, I have grown by leaps and bounds as a software developer and consultant, and I’m surrounded by the best team I’ve ever worked with. But despite this, my personal career goals and aspirations include giving up coding altogether.
At Highgroove, we’re always looking for new Ruby gems to help speed up development and keep the code DRY. The gem I found this time was Heroku’s very own Databasedotcom gem, a fantastic Salesforce.com API wrapper for Ruby! I must admit, I wasn’t very surprised to find a gem since Salesforce owns Heroku, but I did not expect it to be so fantastic and easy to use. Here’s how!
Highgroove Studios has taught me a lot about Software Development, Consulting, and building new web applications. Apart from the myriad of technical skills I’ve added since I came on board, Highgroove is a fantastic company to learn how to build your own web apps, how to design them, and how to remain focused on the most business critical aspects of the system. Highgroove taught me these things by adhering to a process which manages Agile development, responds to changing software requirements and business needs, and encourages constant communication. While these are all noticed by clients, there is one part of the Highgroove process that goes largely unseen; however, it is just as integral as the former three. That behind-the-scenes aspect of the Highgroove development process is keeping the software as simple as possible to meet current demands.