David Hill: 0:00

Shout out to GoRails for sponsoring Ode to RailsConf. If you or your team wants to learn the latest Ruby on Rails features Hotwire Ruby and more check out GoRailscom. Use code ODE2RAILSCONF at checkout to get 10% off. You're listening to the Ode to RailsConf podcast, where we reminisce about our experiences at RailsConf over the years. I'm your host, david Hill, and joining me today is Garrett Greger. Welcome to the podcast, garrett. Hi David, thanks for having me. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?

Garrett Gregor: 0:35

No problem at all. Yeah, my name is Garrett Gregor. I'm from Boulder, colorado. I'm originally from Southern California and I'm a software developer that currently works for a company called Alpha Omega that contracts to the Department of Homeland Security and we work on applications to help USCIS make the process of running through applications for people seeking refugee status or asylum status more expeditious and efficient and secure.

David Hill: 1:04

Okay, I don't know, there's a lot to unpack there.

Garrett Gregor: 1:07

Maybe a separate episode.

David Hill: 1:09

Maybe, wow, and I didn't know that there were rails in that realm.

Garrett Gregor: 1:14

Honestly, where I landed. It could not have been a better place to land. It's kind of like a dream come true. They put you into this quote unquote bootcamp when you first come on board and you work with other new hires on a project where you're encouraged to ask questions, learn about how they do things. They're all about pair programming so you're not working off in silos, you know. It helps spread information so that you know in case somebody leaves. It helps context switch so you end up solving problems faster. It's all in Rails. They're all about TDD. It's great.

David Hill: 1:51

That sounds really cool. While my brain tries to catch up and come up with other things I can ask you about that. Let's talk about RailsConf, since that's the primary thing we came here for. So you were one of the scholars at the last RailsConf in 2024.

Garrett Gregor: 2:06

That's right. Yeah, so I was at RailsConf back when it was in Detroit, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the second to last RailsConf there will ever be.

David Hill: 2:19

Unbeknownst to everyone, except for the Ruby Central people, because I don't think any of us knew.

Garrett Gregor: 2:25

It was definitely a surprise to sit down that first day, and I don't remember exactly when he said it. It was pretty early on.

David Hill: 2:33

Yeah, it was like the opening, the intro on the first day, I think.

Garrett Gregor: 2:37

Yeah, it's totally understandable that they would want to consolidate and I don't know I have nothing to compare it to, so, like in my mind, it didn't really impact the conference per se, but it was definitely still like, oh interesting.

David Hill: 2:51

Yeah, a lot of us had that reaction of just kind of like, oh, that's some stuff we're going to have to process for a little bit. So, anyways, you were a scholar recipient for RailsConf, so like who was your guide?

Garrett Gregor: 3:05

That's right. Yeah, so I was a scholar recipient and the program is just fantastic. Like I think that they've applied that same program to the Ruby comps going forward as well.

David Hill: 3:14

So yeah, they're both run by Ruby Central, so the scholar guide program is run, I think, pretty much identically between the two. I've been to multiple Rails comps, but my first RubyConf was this one in this past November.

Garrett Gregor: 3:27

Oh, you went to Chicago.

David Hill: 3:28

Yeah, it was my first RubyConf and yeah, I kind of got to see a little bit of the Scholar Guide program in action there and it looks like it's pretty much a carbon copy of how they do it in RailsConf.

Garrett Gregor: 3:41

That's awesome to hear because I loved the program. One of my instructors encouraged me to apply to and I ended up going with her and another cohort of mine Another cohort mate of mine was accepted as a scholar as well, and so all three of us went to RailsConf back last May and yeah, it's an awesome program. I would encourage anyone to apply that wants to go to RailsConf. They have you meet with a guide. My guide was Andy Andrea, and he's fantastic. As I'm sure you or anyone listening to the podcast knows. He's incredible. They also have you do this project where you work to either make an application or contribute to an open source project. I chose to contribute to Faker and he kind of helped me package that up along the way. So it's cool. You like get to contribute to the community a little bit and he or they help you in figuring out. You know, maybe attend this thing or maybe skip that one, or, you know, maybe do this one and I'll do that one. So it's great.

David Hill: 4:52

Yeah, the whole idea of helping these people who are newly entered into the community to be active and participating in it very early on, I really love that. It's something that I wish that I had had when I was coming into the Ruby community, because I I really love that. It's something that I wish that I had had when I was coming into the Ruby community, because I didn't have that. I just kind of stumbled my way through everything. So helping people kind of get into the flow of contributing in some way, I think that's really a fantastic example of the benefit that these conferences can have for people.

Garrett Gregor: 5:23

Yeah, I'll also say I still do a fair bit of stumbling, but it's pretty great, not to say you'd never stumble once you've had that intro.

David Hill: 5:30

but like there's that obvious heavy emphasis on open source and open source contributions in this community. Right, I've been working in Ruby since 2009, I think, but my open source contributions have been exceptionally low, like very, very minimal, just because when I came into it, I came into it because I got a job that wanted me to work in Ruby. So I went and learned Ruby and learned Rails and just kind of stumbled around through things. It wasn't until several years later that I got to go to my first conference and even then it's just kind of like I'm in a room full of people feeling a certain amount of social anxiety, being something of an introvert and kind of just being starstruck. The only names I knew at the time were like Aaron Patterson and DHH, so it was like coming into the community kind of blind. That way for me is just like I never felt comfortable trying to be like hey, could I add some code to your thing.

David Hill: 6:28

It wasn't until actually, at Hack Day at RailsConf, I sat down at Nadia Oduayo's table since she had a table there, she was like one of the keynotes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, speakerline. Yeah, speakerline was the project on Hack Day, but she mostly talks about Storygraph. It wasn't until I sat down and started working there where I was able to ask her questions and she had a couple of open issues on the project in the GitHub repo. That made it really really easy to be like okay, well, here's a thing I can work on and if I have any questions I can just ask her. And having the face-to-face interaction instead of it being kind of anonymous and faceless over the internet, that was the experience. That for me, was like oh, maybe contributing to open source isn't as scary as I thought it was. I just need a better environment to deal with it than going into a blind the way I was before.

Garrett Gregor: 7:22

Yeah, I can totally empathize with that, because I had no zero coding experience before starting at Turing this boot camp that I went to. I dabbled with computers as a kid so I was familiar with how to use a computer but had never done any actual coding or programming of the like. And so graduating from Turing and then your goal is to find a job, and it was a particularly hard time to find a job and you know you want to also contribute altruistically, to like just help and also to get a job. But then you go to these projects and they're massive codebases and the sort of like barrier to entry as you said. It's very impersonal and you're not quite sure where to start and you also want to make a good impression so you don't want to do something wrong. So there's all these like other layers to it of like, oh, should I actually do that? And so, yeah, I think having that scholar project and being able to work with a mentor or a guide, it takes a little of that away.

David Hill: 8:29

Absolutely and, as we said before, one of the reasons I love the Scholar Guide program and looking forward to hopefully participating in the Scholar Guide program at this final RailsConf. Yeah, you mentioned a little bit about your background, that you didn't really come from a coding background. You went to the Turing bootcamp. What led you to attend the Turing boot camp and pursue coding when you weren't really coming from a coding background?

Garrett Gregor: 8:54

Yeah, this gives me a chance to do a double take on my intro, actually, which I maybe should have elaborated on.

Garrett Gregor: 9:00

I live in Boulder, as I said, and for a long time I was involved in the climbing world.

Garrett Gregor: 9:05

That's why I moved to Boulder originally is I was just gonna make my life out of climbing, and that's what I did for a long time. I was kind of like a semi-professional athlete for a while. I then became a coach of a youth national competitive climbing team and then became a professional route setter, so like the people that put climbs up on the walls and test them out for people and I did this at commercial climbing gyms, directed a chain of national climbing gyms, their route setting program and especially, I did this at climbing competitions. So like all the way from your local everyday climbing competition all the way up to world cup and Olympic level. I was actually the head route setter of the Paris 2024 Olympics and was involved in the Tokyo 2021 Olympics and, coincidentally enough, like two of the kids that I coached were the first to qualify to climbing's debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. And then they also qualified again in 2024. And one of them won a silver medal in 2024 in Paris.

David Hill: 10:12

You're making me feel like I have not done enough with my life.

Garrett Gregor: 10:16

No, not at all. So yeah, I was involved in climbing for a long time and I like that's pretty much all I did. What led you here? Doing what I did or slash, still do to some extent it's a lot on your body. It is very taxing and to do it at that high level.

Garrett Gregor: 10:33

When you route set, there's a lot of climbers actually that go into software development. We call them problems actually in bouldering and problem solving. And so the process of route setting, you work together with other people within a set of certain constraints to come up with a solution, a proposed solution to this thing, and you design it and you test it out and then you iterate on it and then you make some changes and you reiterate and you kind of like go through this process, and so it's very much like a red green refactor type thing, except there's a lot of other variables involved. But the thought of doing that and testing it out and physically being reliant on my body when I was 20 years, down the line, 65 years old or something like that, then it starts to become harder to see and it requires a lot of travel and I started to think like what am I going to do? And I started to consider maybe I'll go to law school I graduated with a degree in creative writing, but maybe I'll go to law school and then I had some friends that attended Turing and they're like I think you'd like it and eventually I applied and turns out it's super interesting and there's no shortage of things to learn and I love learning. So, yeah, I went to Turing back in March of 2023 is when I started, graduated in September of 2023. And Turing is just so fantastic.

Garrett Gregor: 11:55

I think bootcamps, after like the big boom of technology like really just blew up and everybody it seemed like we were doing a bootcamp and some people do them in like six weeks or whatever.

Garrett Gregor: 12:06

But Turing is pretty rigorous. They go six months and they go pretty deep and you learn a lot of what it takes to like figure out how to solve problems and be a software developer. Turing is not in a silo. They are not immune to sort of like the tech industry in general, and they've been struggling to get people into the bootcamp with all the fear of AI and people not wanting to commit to doing that. It's just me, but I think it's a little bit overhyped, this whole AI thing in terms of like it's going to take everyone's job and I think Turing does a fantastic job and they're a little bit at the risk of potentially closing down if they don't get enough students or enough funding. And I couldn't say anything better about Turing and my time there and the community there and the instructors there they're all just fantastic. So if anybody's considering, I would highly recommend Turing.

David Hill: 13:01

Awesome Not awesome that Turing is in dire straits, but glad that Turing was a good experience for you. I've heard from multiple other people who've gone through the Turing boot camp that it was really good for them. I hope that they are able to get the funding that they need. Jeff Casimir he's the executive director for the Turing School. He was at RubyConf this past November and he gave a quick lightning talk about the Turing program and everything, trying to hype that up a little bit, and so I've heard nothing but good things about it. I hope that they get the students and the funding that they need so they can keep doing what they're doing, Because I've seen a lot of great software developers come into the community from the Turing school.

Garrett Gregor: 13:42

Yeah, likewise, I hope so as well.

David Hill: 13:45

Awesome. Oh, I forgot to say too.

Garrett Gregor: 13:45

And so after Turing School yeah, likewise, I hope so as well. Awesome, oh, I forgot to say too. And so after Turing, you know, spent a little while finding a job and then eventually made my way to the Rails Scholars Guides program and then just so happened to meet someone and landed in a job with Alpha Omega. So super happy about that.

David Hill: 14:00

So the job that you landed came from a connection you made at RailsConf.

Garrett Gregor: 14:05

Yeah, coincidentally, I was a little bit on the fence because I was supposed to go to the Shanghai qualifying series for the Olympics back in May and I had to go to Shanghai and the scholars program accepted me and I had already accepted this job to work at the Olympics and I was like I can only attend two days. I really want to go and it's going to be even more travel on top of going to go, and it's going to be even more travel on top of going to Shanghai and I'm going to be. I decided to go and went to RailsConf and I was just trying to make the most of it and went to as much as I could and met as many people as I could and was just walking around on the terrace one afternoon and was like, well, I'm not going to find a job, I guess I'll just enjoy this last sandwich. I was leaving the next day, I couldn't stay for the third day and then I just hit it off with this guy. We started chatting and he was like yeah, actually my team's hiring and you should apply.

Garrett Gregor: 14:56

Somebody once said like luck is where opportunity means preparedness, and so, like I certainly was doing, I still go back and like mentor students. Now I was making time out of my day Like I did the scholars guides program, like I did everything, put it out to the universe Like I'm ready. And so, fortunately, I had the opportunity and that's my luck.

David Hill: 15:15

That's awesome. So it feels like you kind of just dove into the deep end of the pool.

Garrett Gregor: 15:20

That's kind of what Turing does is they're just like go for it. Obviously they teach, but I think a big part of what you learn sounds cliche. We say this a lot as English majors. But learning how to learn, that's one of my favorite speeches David Foster Wallace gives. That's the old adage of if you can know how to do that, then you can do just about anything, and if you can communicate well. If you can't communicate well, then it doesn't matter what you know. But if you can do both those things, then yeah.

David Hill: 15:50

Yeah, and like you said before, there's always so much more to learn. There's always something new coming around somewhere in the tech field that we're always having to pick up something new.

David Hill: 16:02

Totally, and you have to be able to adapt and problem solve on the fly and that's very much like almost the definition of the job is problem solving.

David Hill: 16:10

It's one of the things about this job that took me a long time to really kind of grok was that for a long time I thought my job was writing code. But really the job is understanding a problem that someone is having and then using code as a tool to solve that problem Like that's actually the job. That's when you really start to feel, oh, this is a really cool job that I have. I'm not just a code monkey, I'm solving somebody's problem and making their life or their job or their day a little bit easier. I just use code to do it. Yeah, totally Cool. So you mentioned before you did a lot of coaching and mentoring of climbers during your previous jobs and now you've gone through a very receiving mentorship program through Rails Confident Scholar Guide Program. I was wondering if you had any closing thoughts about the importance of those types of mentoring opportunities for people coming into the Ruby community or just in general.

Garrett Gregor: 17:09

Yeah, I can't say enough about how important I think it is to be a mentor.

Garrett Gregor: 17:18

I like to think of them as partnerships because I think that the mentor gets as much out of it as the mentee does.

Garrett Gregor: 17:27

I still currently go back and mentor students from Turing and it teaches me so much about what my own blind spots are, of gaps in knowledge or understanding how problems were and being able to, like context, switch to what they're doing. Yeah, it's really helpful in adapting to new problems, just selfishly, I guess. You know one of the things I loved about coaching, one of the things I love about partnerships, is that, like when you're like sharing something like that with someone and you like see that light bulb turn on and they're like, oh, I get it. It's just such a rewarding feeling and you get to like help do that for for someone else and help inspire that, and when you get to see that turn on, it's a pretty special moment, be that in something physical like climbing or something where somebody is just like learning something, it's pretty cool. So I would highly recommend it for anyone and I think it does a lot, like you said at the beginning, to break down those barriers and make it easier for people to explore.

David Hill: 18:31

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. The opportunities that I've had when I received mentorship or was able to give it have always been especially rewarding and, like you said, even as a mentor, I find those experiences something where I tend to learn something or have something kind of re-solidified in my head where I was like, oh yeah, it's been a while since I thought about something at that level or in that particular light, and so it was like it always ended up helping me be able to progress a little bit further too. So, yeah, couldn't agree more. I'm really glad that the Scholar Guide program exists and that it'll be continuing at RubyConf, even after RailsConf is done, and I'm hoping to participate more in that over the years and hope to see you and any of our listeners get involved too.

Garrett Gregor: 19:15

Likewise, yeah, I hope to be a part of it for years to come. So thank you.

David Hill: 19:19

Yeah, well, thanks for coming on the podcast today and I will hopefully be seeing you around at some other events later on. All right, david, thank you. Thanks, garrett.