Much to not-too-far-past-Ben's surprise, I accepted an offer this morning for my first full-time software engineering role. Beginning June 1, 2020, pending a successful visa process and a potential global pandemic, I will be working for Dalia Research in the role of "Backend Engineer".
A few points of interest:
It's primarily a Ruby/Rails job. If you take a quick look at my post history, that's...not one of mine. I will have some Ruby to learn. (I told them this.)
This company is located in Berlin, Germany. It's not a remote gig, and I live in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. To avoid the prohibitive commute, I'm relocating to Berlin. I will have some German to learn. (I told them this.)
DEV's
work_statusboolean is entirely to blame. Thanks, DEV, very cool!
The point as it pertains to DEV, I guess, is that I'll probably start writing about Ruby! I'm already a fan.
Plot twist, right?
I would love any recommendations you may have for high-quality human-language self-learning. While the office speaks English and Berlin has a high concentration of foreigners, I will want to attain at least ILR 2 - of course not necessarily entirely before I go. Is Rosetta Stone worth the cash? Pimsleur? I've started the Duolingo track but that's really just practice, I need something more substantial as well.
Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash
Oldest comments (39)
Congratulations Ben 🎉
P.S.: I've no clue of Ruby, I would not be against a first beginner friendly post 😉
That's a good idea, once I get my bearings!
Congrats!
I'm living in Germany for some time and my German is still(shame on me) very basic. I can't talk about Rosetta Stone, but Duolingo is pretty cool for increasing your vocabulary.
The tip my coworkers always give me is to try italki. I never tried it, but the ones who did here say it's affordable and you can find good teachers.
Thanks so much for the tip! Never heard of this.
Congrats Ben!
Congrats!
A commitment and brave decision to your life and software career, good luck and best wishes !!
I've been programming in Ruby for almost 10 years, a few suggestions I might tell you:
I believe the best way of learning Ruby on Rails is through the book: Agile Web Development with Rails, it starts with an example app which I think it's very instructive.
Ruby has its flaws, it's good to recognize them from the beginning, that will help you in the future, being a dynamic language can be frustrating sometimes, the way the community compensates that is through unit testing, you need to tests a lot, things that with a static language you don't need to.
Avoid metaprogramming as much as you can, might seems pretty cool but in the end the code turns out a little bit hard to follow for your coworkers.
If you need any help feel free to contact me.
Best regards.
Thank you so much, this is great. Will definitely keep this comment around.
Congrats, good luck!
Thank you! I did take a single semester about a decade ago, I have some of the sounds and basics still in my head somewhere - excited to have a reason to start again!
The interview was more about drilling in to whether I understand the platform, not so much the specific tools. I used Rust throughout and was able to demonstrate that I do. Also, it is an English-speaking workplace.
Trust me, I'm pretty surprised too. This was a loooong shot.
Congrats man! I have no doubt that you'll be teaching us all Rails through your posts in the not too distant future!
Trust me, so am I :)
That's amazing! Congratulations, and good luck with the move!
Congrats!
You weren't down with having a daily morning swim, eh? Just as well. I heard traffic in the mid-Atlantic can be a real bear.
It's 2020 already, I was told there'd be jetpacks and teleportation...
Fax machine works good for long distance commute, assuming the destination machine has enough toner and there's a decent bicycle pump on hand.
Okay, I'll bite. What's the pump for?
Because when you come out of the fax machine, you're always pretty flat.
I'm reporting this joke.
Congrats!! Hope this new adventure brings you tons of success and happy experiences :D
Finally, Ben Eleven
Wow congrats! Sounds like it's going to be an adventure for you.
Thank you! Quite the understatement :)