Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Mike Gehard This week on My Ruby Story, Charles talks to Mike Gehard. Mike currently works for Pivotal working in the Platform Acceleration Lab. He first got into programming when he was 10 working with his Commodore 64, but really stepped up his interest after he graduated with his Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and started working at a petrochemical refining research company, where it was very computer based. They discuss how he found his way to Ruby and how easy it is to create things with it, as well as the things that he has contributed to the Ruby community that he is proud of. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Pivotal Platform Acceleration Lab How did you first get into to programming? Commodore 64 C++ in Undergrad Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering Master’s in Software Engineering Consulting in Chicago using C++ What is your take on the state of CS education? CS degree is not necessary, but offers many benefits It’s important to have the ability to be analytical as a programmer Scala Figure out how you learn best, and leverage that going forward Get a Coder Job Course Rails How did you get into Ruby? Rails doesn’t take a lot of “banging” to get something to fall out the other end being useful What have you contributed to the Ruby community that you’re proud of? What are you working on now? Kotlin Language IntelliJ IDEA Giving conference talks Microservices And much, much more! Links: Pivotal Platform Acceleration Lab Scala Get a Coder Job Course Rails Ruby Kotlin IntelliJ IDEA DevChat.tv YouTube @MikeGehard Picks: Charles Masterbuilt Smoker SlowCooker Elixir Mix Podcast coming soon Mike Kotlin Programming Language Building Microservices by Sam Newman