About The Code Gardener

Hello! And, welcome to The Code Gardener – an occasional newsletter about writing software well!

My name is Alan. I'll be your host.

I've been writing software professionally for 35+ years. The first decade or so was on the Windows desktop, with lots of multimedia, mostly Laserdisc and CD-ROM development. In the late 1990's, I transitioned to the web, first on VBScript and ASP, then C# and ASP.NET once they were released. In 2011, I moved from Seattle to San Francisco, where there is zero .NET work. So, I switched to Ruby on Rails and never looked back! I 💚 Ruby! We have a beautiful relationship. I'm on speaking terms with Rails; but we don't always agree.

This is my good friend, Fito, who will co-host regularly.

Fito has about 15 years of experience. He began his career writing Ruby code with RSpec, but without Rails. He came to Rails a little later, which has its advantages. In fact, Fito knows Ruby and RSpec better than anyone else I know. And, like me, he also prefers working with Ruby over working with Rails.

Fito and I met in 2014. We were coworkers at a company called Social Chorus (now FirstUp). In 2017, I left and joined a company called Entelo. Fito followed a few weeks later. There we became good friends. And, in 2019, I jumped ship and joined Cisco Meraki. Fito again followed me a few weeks later. Since then, we've become best friends and partners in crime. I'm now a Senior Engineering Manager with six teams, and Fito is a Staff Software Engineer on my Modularization team.

We've written several open source projects together. Probably the most successful project is a VS Code extension called Ruby Flog. It displays flog scores in the editor's footer. My favorites, though, are a lightweight web framework called Liberty, and a tool for creating self registering factories called Manufacturable.

In 2022, Fito and I began speaking at conferences. My first attempt was a nerve racking lightning talk at RailsConf 2022 in Portland, Oregon. Our first talk together was a talk we call A Brewer's Guide to Filtering Out Complexity and Churn. We've given that talk over half a dozen times: once internally at Cisco Meraki; then at RubyConf Mini 2022 in Providence, Rhode Island; at RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia; at RubyUY Meetup in Montevideo, Uruguay; at Tropical.rb 2024 in São Paulo, Brazil; at Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024 in Boulder, Colorado; at the SF Ruby Meetup; and, at Sin City Ruby 2025, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The talk has evolved over time. We think it keeps getting better. So, watch the one from Rocky Mountain Ruby! (There are no recordings for the SF Ruby Meetup (technical problems) or Sin City Ruby (because what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas)).

Thanks for being here! We hope you enjoy the content! Please let us know what you think! We're both on Bluesky at @alan.codegardener.com and @fito.codegardener.com.