Aleksey Gureiev Winner RPCFN - 4

In this brief interview, Satish Talim of RubyLearning talks to Aleksey Gureiev of Ukraine, winner of the fourth Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies.

Satish>> Welcome Aleksey and thanks for taking out time to share your thoughts. For the benefit of the readers, could you tell us something about your self?

Aleksey>> Thanks Satish for the opportunity. I’m a 30 year old independent contractor married to a great woman. Originally from Sevastopol, Ukraine, but moved to Melbourne, Australia a week ago. I came to the Ruby world from Java and low-level C++ with more than 10 years of background in both. Know two dozen programing languages but out of all of them, Ruby is my “love from the first sight”. I’m with Ruby for 3 years now and not planning a change, even though I learned a couple of others since then.

Satish>> How did you get involved with Ruby programming?

Aleksey>> As an independent contractor, I’m always looking at ways to extend the horizons and learning a couple of languages or technologies every year, just to stay on the edge. Ruby was one of these languages. The only difference is that I switched over to it immediately and have never looked back again.

Satish>> Could you name three features of Ruby that you like the most, as compared to other languages? Why?

Aleksey>>

1. Flexibility. Whether it’s defining DSLs and using them to simplify code, or just extending existing classes on the fly through the reopening in a way it’s implemented in Ruby turned my world upside-down. Dynamic programming plays a huge role in my everyday coding.
2. Object orientation. The fact that everything in the Ruby world is an object and benefits from this means a lot. Now given that you can script without defining classes (as you have to do in Java, for example) and still can benefit from OO features is terrific.
3. Availability for the web development. Not exactly the feature, but still a great asset. The way Ruby changed web development in recent years is hard to put in words. Freelancers like me now can deliver more reliable and flexible products, faster than ever.

Satish>> How was experience of taking part in the Ruby Programming Challenge For Newbies (RPCFN)?

Aleksey>> Loved it, to say the least. The task was challenging enough to scratch the head for a nice solution. I would say the challenges like this teach people to dig for info and come up with something elegant, off the beaten path solutions. Problem solving and learning ways to educate yourself is more important than specific language skills or knowing all the docs by heart.

Satish>> How is the Ruby and Rails scenario in your country Ukraine?

Aleksey>> It’s still building speed there (I’m sorry, I’ve just left the place). Not sure about the capital area, but on the outskirts it’s still hard to find anyone working with Ruby. I had a great luck working with a team of converts who continued working with PHP while starting to explore Ruby. Watching their reaction as they continued to explore was just another confirmation that Ruby has the bright future.

Satish>> What are your future plans?

Aleksey>> I’m continuing to work with Ruby and specifically with Ruby on Rails. In my daily work I switched to it entirely and currently recommending to all my clients. Recently, I’ve been working on an iPhone native app (Objective-C) that talks to a server back-end. It’s needless to say that the server side was implemented in RoR with the complete test suite in no time, great quality and sheer pleasure on both sides.

Thank you Aleksey. In case you have any queries and/or questions, kindly post your questions here (as comments to this blog post) and Aleksey would be glad to answer.