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 since 1987, professionally since 1990. For the first 20 years or so, I mostly used Microsoft technologies. Since 2011, I've exclusively used Ruby, with a fair amount of Rails. I have no desire to go back.

I 💚 Ruby! We have a beautiful relationship. I'm on speaking terms with Rails; but we don't always agree.

I've been managing software teams for nearly a decade, now. I began the same year I made the switch to Ruby and Rails. That was difficult. After a couple of years of struggling with both, I went back to being an IC in order to solidify my Ruby and Rails skills before taking another run at management in 2017. I'm now a Senior Engineering Manager at Cisco with 6 teams and 40 people.

This is my good friend and co-host, Fito.

Fito has 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 is a Staff Software Engineer at Cisco.

We've written a few open source projects together.

And, we're also public speakers within the Ruby community.

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