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 Sunjay Armstead. Sunjay was a scholar at RubyConf in November and, Sunjay, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're coming from?

Sunjay Armstead: 0:38

Hey, david, thanks so much for having me today and yes, I was a scholar this past RubyConf, which was a lot of fun. I am a designer turned engineer, so design engineer, I guess I like both. I can't choose, so I just do both. 2024 was actually my very first ever technical conference, so the Scholars Program made that possible for me and it was such a privilege and an honor to do.

David Hill: 1:06

This might be a bad instinct on my part, but whenever people are talking about coming to their first conference like that, the meme or the animated GIF I always want to send is the one from Die Hard, where it's like Bruce Willis of the Broken Window, like welcome to the party pal.

Sunjay Armstead: 1:22

Yes, yeah, and that's exactly why I feel like the scholars guides program is so important, because when I was thinking about, okay, I'm going to attend this conference, I'm like I don't know any of these people. I don't even know what to expect. I've never been to a conference.

David Hill: 1:36

So, yeah, thankfully it wasn't like the diehard experience, right yes, yes, but like, and that's a great kind of lead into how did the Scholar Guide Program help you with that?

Sunjay Armstead: 1:49

So what the Scholar's Guide Program does. Basically you get assigned, so I was a scholar, so you are given a guide to literally guide you throughout your journey in the conference. So my guide was Fred Chung. He's an engineer at Skiller Will. He's a great guy. Basically, his role was to introduce me to people, doing that first awkward step for me, which is really helpful. So it's like, oh, this person is that person. Oh, and that person's Matt, you should talk to Matt, not only introducing people. But then we had a few conversations before the conference that was like okay, what are the things you're interested in, what are your goals for the conference, what are the things that you want to get from it? And based on that I was able to make a mock schedule for myself and really just maximize every last part of that conference.

David Hill: 2:42

One other aspect of the Scholar Guide program is that they give you several different kind of suggestions, but they have some kind of a project that they want you to work on right.

Sunjay Armstead: 2:51

Yes, what did you do for that? My project? I created a manifesto because I'm extra and I just like manifestos. I was reflecting on my journey as an engineer and I realized that I'm here where I am today because of the generous people who have stepped ahead of me and helped me through it. I created the Advanced Manifesto and that's built on Rails. Basically, there's four key pillars of that manifesto. So the four key pillars are to create, share, invest and cultivate. By a person signing this manifesto, they're saying, hey, I'm going to create opportunities for those ahead of me and behind me. I'm going to share my domain and technical knowledge. I'm going to invest in mentorship and also cultivate relationships. So for my project, I created a manifesto which also happens to be a Rails app, so that's fun too. I also designed it in Figma and did all the design myself. So it was a lot of fun because I got to put both my passions together design and engineering.

David Hill: 3:54

Nice. So where is this manifesto available? I'm assuming it's online somewhere.

Sunjay Armstead: 3:59

Oh it is. I'm glad you asked. It's at advancedmanifestocom. And if you go to advancedmanifestocom and you decide, hey, there's a bug or there's a feature, if you go to the very bottom there is a GitHub link to the public repo. Feel free to submit your issues, happy to look at those and even welcome you on as a contributor.

David Hill: 4:27

So this is your first technical convention that you attended. Any particularly big takeaways for you from this experience? So?

Sunjay Armstead: 4:36

I would say the biggest takeaway, and I thought the takeaway was going to be like I learned something about Sidekick by Keith Gable, or I learned something about the internal components of how Ruby works, which I did. But the key takeaway for me was actually the hallway track, and everyone told me that I was like high and mighty. I was like I'm not going to do the hallway track because I am going to go to learn something. But little did I know that I actually learned the most during the hallway track, when I talked with other people and I just kind of picked their brains about different things. I learned so much. So I would say my key takeaway is the hallway track, for sure.

David Hill: 5:19

I can't agree with that strongly enough. My first couple of years attending RailsConf, I scheduled myself, booked the whole way through the conference of just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, social anxiety and a little bit of introversion and stuff like that. The hallway track was not where I wanted to be. But then over time, as I gradually had experiences with people in the hallway track, I started to really see the value of it. I'm going to tell you a story here. So this was probably 2015 or 16, I think.

David Hill: 5:49

I'm in a little lounge area somewhere and there's like four or five people kind of chatting and they're chatting about this background job processing gem, little known thing called Sidekick. Hardly anyone's ever heard of it. This is funny. I was maintaining an app that I had inherited from someone else who had built it, and they were using delayed job, so that's what I was using.

David Hill: 6:22

Most of the people left, but the one person who'd been like the center of the sidekick conversation was still there, and so I finally got the courage up when I asked him to basically like sell me on sidekick, like I'm already using delayed job, what does sidekick do that delayed job doesn't do, turns out the person I was talking to was mike perum the guy, of course. So he very graciously, and with us a mild amount of excitement, just went into all of the stuff that sidekick does, that delayed job doesn't, because, like you know, they're different gems with different priorities and everything. But like. That was like my first real experience with the hallway track of just like, oh, I just learned a whole bunch from this guy who created, apparently, one of the most popular background processing gems. That was the first experience I had of like, oh, there's value here in the hallway track. Oh, there's value here in the hallway track.

Sunjay Armstead: 7:18

It's funny you mentioned Mike. So Keith Gable gave a talk called Lessons I Learned from Running Sidekick at Scale and Mike was actually sitting in the front row, which is awesome. I love it and what I really appreciate and we were talking earlier about key takeaways that I might've got from the conference I just have learned that the Ruby community is not all talk. They really are so humble and so willing to learn from each other. It doesn't matter if you created the gem Even Matt, he'll show up to something and just ask questions. He's open to it. Same thing with Mike sitting in the front row of a talk about your own product. That's just incredible to it. Same thing with Mike sitting in the front row to talk about your own products that's just incredible to me, yeah that's one of the big takeaways for me from doing this podcast for a little while now.

David Hill: 8:08

This is that and I'm sure people listening to the podcast are tired of me saying this the common through line that almost everybody mentions coming out of these tech conferences is the community and the people, and how just kind and welcoming and open everybody is there.

Sunjay Armstead: 8:24

Yeah, I couldn't agree more From top to bottom, from first-time attendees that I met to seasoned people, and even what was really nice is I was able to connect with people in Slack during the event. What that allowed me to do was actually make intentional hallway track conversations, so I love it. The community is really wonderful. You're definitely right on that, and it is an investment to go to a conference, but I think it's worthwhile. There's still people that I talk to from the conference. Jim Remsick is another one of those, and he's a great guy. Great guy, hi, jim, if you're listening. Hi.

David Hill: 9:06

I would love it if he was listening, because if he is, he's one of the people that's on the short list of names that I people I haven't invited on the podcast yet that I need to. I would love to have him come chat with me about co-chairing RubyConf, because that's an endeavor in and of itself. But yeah, I got to have 15 minutes of alone time with him at one point, since I was volunteering with the conference, and so one morning I went with Jim somewhere to kind of help set some stuff up. I just had some alone time with Jim where he was just talking about stuff and I was just like Jim's a nice guy I want to talk to him more.

Sunjay Armstead: 9:43

So Jim and I are actually co-leading a book club right now through Sandy Metz's book Pooter, which is the funniest acronym in the world. But anyways, we're doing that book club, and what I find so interesting, even as a seasoned leader, what I love about Jim, is that he'll just ask me a question as if he doesn't know it, like I know this, jim, I know you know this, but he's so humble and willing to change his mind. I've been in this for a lot less years than he has, but I think that's a reflection of the community that's bringing us up, if that makes sense, so go for it and that's been my experience with the relatively few times I've been in a position to mentor somebody else.

David Hill: 10:31

Having that person who has a very different perspective, who maybe they don't have as much of what I would call the fundamentals in terms of understanding the problem that we're talking about, but that kind of elicits my need to ask more questions about what it is that they do understand. Why are they taking a certain approach to understand their mentality behind things? Because, like, sometimes it's just they're approaching it from a different perspective. Sometimes it's they're unaware of something over here that now I can share information about. But, like, being able to ask questions and really kind of dive into a different person's perspective, I think is one of those really valuable things that comes from that type of humility that you're talking about with Jim.

Sunjay Armstead: 11:17

Yeah, absolutely.

David Hill: 11:18

So what else? What else did you come out of RailsConf that you'd be willing to share with us here?

Sunjay Armstead: 11:24

I went to so many different talks and I was looking through my notes here I got one from Aaron Patterson. There's a few of the keynotes, like the one from Brandon Weaver that was just out of this world. I would say. Nick Means' talk was absolutely incredible. He's a wonderful orator. He knows what he's doing when he gets up on stage. Wonderful orator, he knows what he's doing when he gets up on stage and he talked about all the different steps that happened in the process of a plane crashing and as an audience member, you're like oh no, we're talking about people dying here. But it's a reality check. As an engineer, like, oh yeah, the things we do matter, even if I'm just like I don't know I'm not working for Spotify. But even if I was just making music for Spotify, the things we do matter, even if I'm just like I don't know I'm not working for Spotify. But even if I was just like making music for Spotify, like the things that we do matter, like even if it's not like life or death, I really appreciate a Knicks talk.

David Hill: 12:17

Going back to my early experiences at RailsConf, when I was very focused on just the talks and less so on like the interpersonal relationships. At that point in my career I still kind of thought that my job was about code, but over time it was just like no, the code is the tool that helps you do the job. The job is actually problem solving for a person out there somewhere, because if what you're building doesn't impact a person somewhere down the line, then why are you building it? Even if that person is you or a future version of you like there's got to be a human on the other end of it or it doesn't really feel like I'm doing anything worthwhile.

Sunjay Armstead: 12:56

Yeah, I've had a similar kind of reflection over the years too, when I was first learning to code. You know, I'm just HTML, css JavaScript, just like just HTML, css JavaScript, just like also anecdote time. So my very first application, if we can call it that, was like a text file on my Windows computer. It was called jackspackshtml and it was just an unordered list of backpacks on every single line. But that was at a time when I thought that like this is what it means to program, like you were writing code. But over time, very similar to you, david, I've realized that even if you're not a UX engineer, you still need to think about the end user and the potential multiple segments of that user base. I mean to your point. I love what you're saying there. We really have to remember that our code, it affects people Ultimately. People are using it, even if it's indirectly, and that's part of why it matters.

David Hill: 13:58

You mentioned that you came from a design background. Ooh, this is true. So what led you into Ruby on Rails from there? I'm always curious to see where was the bug that bit you, that caused you to take that sharp right turn and enter developer land.

Sunjay Armstead: 14:17

Okay, all right, gather around the fire everybody, let's talk about this. So this was back in 2021. I was listening to a podcast by Amy Dutton called Compressed FM, and she, at the time, was working for a company called Zeal. They're based out of Grants Pass, oregon. At the time, they were doing a software residency program. That was like exactly what I needed, because I was in my first year of developing. I was the only developer on my team and I was starting to flatline in terms of growth and development, and so I was like I really need to be surrounded by people who are much smarter than I am. Anyways, fast forward.

Sunjay Armstead: 15:03

I ended up getting the residency position as a UI, ux designer and software engineer. The really cool thing about that was it's like a residency, like I'm actually an engineer, so I'm responsible for actual tickets, like to do actual work. And it just so happened that this consultancy, zeal, was working primarily as a Rails shop. Its clients were using pretty much almost exclusively Rails or Rails adjacent stacks and frameworks. So it was kind of during that season that I started to learn Ruby. And it's interesting because I come from a JavaScript background actually because I was front-end focused for a little while, and so it was JavaScript. You know you talk about the bug that bit you.

Sunjay Armstead: 15:48

I love Ruby. It's so easy. I feel like I'm having a conversation with my computer. It's just so wonderful. Anyways, I love the syntax and this was an opportunity for me to just go head first into full stack development and I was like I'm going to do it. And as I did that, I asked more questions and I learned. I really feel like I just going to do it and as I did that, I asked more questions and I learned. I really feel like I just I didn't look back. I love this. It's so much fun.

David Hill: 16:14

I discovered Ruby after working full-time as an engineer in PHP and in Java for a couple of years. When I stumbled my way into Ruby, I was just like, oh, I don't have to rack my brain to read this code. Like you said, it's like just having a conversation with my computer. This is so much nicer I like this better.

Sunjay Armstead: 16:37

So I set a JavaScript LAN. Part of that is a whole lot of WordPress. So even though I'm a quote unquote front end engineer at the time, you still kind of have to cowboy code and throw a few plugins together Like PHP. Oh boy, oh PHP. I mean, I know it's good, it's powerful, but it does read differently.

David Hill: 17:01

It has its place. That's still a monster in terms of the workload that it pulls off across the internet. It's just not for me anymore. Yes, so the final RailsConf is coming up this year in July, and there won't even be a RubyConf this year. They're just going to focus on RailsConf this year. I have it on fairly good authority that by the time this episode airs, have it on fairly good authority that by the time this episode airs, the applications should be open already for the Scholar Guide program. So, with that said, what would you like to say, sanjay, about people participating in this program?

Sunjay Armstead: 17:43

You've heard us talk over this conversation. You've heard me share my experiences. I just want to pull the listener aside and just say this was one of the best technical experiences I've had in a very long time as a scholar and I look forward to potentially returning as a guide to pay it forward. If you have the opportunity to go this year and be part of RailsConf and either be a scholar or a guide, please, please, please do it.

David Hill: 18:13

It's so worth it and I feel like the trajectory of your career you'll see some bright spots afterwards for sure wanted as strongly as I can second what you just said there, sanjay, that the Scholar Guide Program is an amazing program. I can't say enough good things about it and I hope that if anyone is curious about the Scholar Guide Program, there are several episodes of the podcast here where I've talked to people who have participated as scholars, as guides, as part of the committee that runs it, to kind of shed some light on how it is that they actually operate the program, how they pick people to be guides and stuff like that. So trying to kind of create enough information out there that if people are curious about it they can find information. If you're interested, definitely go apply for it. The more interest there is in the program, the better for everybody involved. So yeah, I would absolutely. If you're interested in Ruby on Rails, come look at this program and see how you can get involved.

Sunjay Armstead: 19:19

Yes, I second that Awesome.

David Hill: 19:22

Well, Sanjay, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me.