WHAT MAKES THE TEAM CONTRIBUTE TO THE COMMUNITY
On the occasion of the 24th birthday of Ruby, we had an insightful talk with a few real Ruby masters. Along with their great work at the Funding Circle team and various hobbies they are practising, Monica, Aleksandar Ivanov and Alexander Popov are regularly volunteering at the local community event Rails Girls. The event is a 2-day workshop about Ruby on Rails that is aiming to attract more women to the tech sector and is also often supported by Questers.
We had an interesting chat with our 3 Rubyists about what they like about the language and what motivates them to teach it. Check out what we’ve learned.
The lady in the team - Monica Dimitrova, has almost 5 years of professional experience with Ruby. What she likes about the language is its elegant syntax, the ease of writing clean code and the very active and friendly community.
Aleksandar Ivanov was one of the first ones to join the Funding Circle team in Bulgaria. He has about 7 years of experience with Ruby and admires the readability of the language and also its great community.
Alexander Popov has been coding with Ruby for 5 years now, and when we asked him what he likes about Ruby, he quoted Yukihiro Matsumoto: “The goal of Ruby is to make programmers happy”, and added, “Its elegance, friendliness, and community indeed make me happy”.
Aleksandar I. has been volunteering at least once a year at Rails Girls Sofia since the first event back in 2013. A year later, Monica and Alexander P. have started volunteering as instructors as well. What’s more, back in 2017 Alexander was invited to join the organizers’ team. Now he helps with the communication between the participants and instructors, organises special dinners for the instructors and assists with the organisational activities on the day of the event itself.
Fascinated by the enthusiasm and dedication all of them are investing while teaching Ruby, we were curious to learn what motivates them. While Monica is attracted by the uplifting atmosphere that brings her positive emotions and the satisfaction of sharing knowledge with people eager to step out of their comfort zone, Aleksandar I. sees it as a fun event that promotes the industry. He also shares that “it is quite gratifying to see the attendees progress and even try to join the community after the workshops”. For Alexander P. volunteering at Rails Girls Sofia is a chance to give back to the Ruby community, as well as the wider IT community in the country. And we would agree with him that events such as this “help people more easily enter the IT industry and thus acquire a modern sought-after and challenging profession”.
We are glad to have such smart, enthusiastic and active people on board who are the living proof of how incredible the Ruby community is. We hope they remain curious, proactive and always striving for a positive change. And as all Rubyists from the community – have your own little celebration today, it’s a great occasion to appreciate your work and development through the years.