From Agency Life to Software Development: Q&A with Steve Polito

Apr 16, 2020

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[00:02:43] Steve gives his background, jobs he’s had, and what he’s currently doing now. He also talks about how he stumbled upon Rails and how it was exactly what he was looking for because it allowed him so many resources. He did snag his own domain which is nice.

[00:08:25] Chris chimes because he can relate to everything Steve has been talking about with agency work. He also talks about something that taught him the most which was spending time cloning stuff that already existed.

[00:12:04] Steve asks the guys questions about task models and reminder models. Andrew mentions a video he should watch on database designs for beginners by David Copeland. Chris gives some advice on design patterns and talks about his first Rails job.

[00:18:54] Steve has questions about users note and if there should be a note limit column on the user’s table with a default value. Chris gives his advice on this.

[00:24:06] Jason jumps in with answering Steve’s questions about migrations and manipulating data within that migration since he’s had positive and negative experiences doing data migrations. Chris also shares some information.

[00:31:33 Steve asks about the database being locked up and what would need to be done so Chris and Jason give his advice on what to do. Jason mentions a concept called, “Database Transactions.”

[00:37:21] Steve wonders how often he should be updating his Gems, if at all. He knows there are security releases for Gems and Rails but is he supposed to be doing this every day? Andrew and Chris give him some info on this.

[00:44:05] Steve asks about what Webpacker does and Chris explains it more in depth. Chris also talks about Turbo Links and JavaScript.

[00:50:04] Steve has “Career” questions he poses to the guys. He wants to know how they got their foot in the door and how they got their breakthrough. Also, he wants to know what their thoughts are on the job market. There are some very interesting stories and awesome advice given by the guys that is definitely worth listening to.

[01:05:18] Nate drops in and has a bit of advice for Steve by telling him to not beat himself up if he bombs a few interviews. It’s just the culture of tech hiring now, which is not great. Basically, it just takes time.

Sponsor:

Linode

Panelists:

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Jason Charnes

Guest Panelist:

Nate Hopkins (jumps in at the end with his knowledge bombs!)

Guest:

Steve Polito

Links:

Steve Polito