Digital Stories

Of the many technologies we master, some just find their way into our developers’ hearts. And Ruby on Rails (RoR) is no exception. We’ve been working with RoR for more than six years now. While gaining in-depth knowledge and delivering awesome software, we’ve also come to build our own in-house RoR community of expert developers and enthusiasts.

Apart from sheer passion for the language, our continuous learning culture has played a considerable role in developing our Ruby on Rails expertise. How did all this happen? Let’s walk through the key steps we took to let the Ruby magic shine.

Let Passion Drive You Forward

Forever curious, we love to explore new technologies in order to find the best tech stack for each project. A rising star of programming languages, Ruby caught our eye back in the day. For many of us it was love at first line of code; fast forward six years and we now have two teams of expert RoR developers working on multiple projects.

Ruby is easy to work with and is super great for delivering fast and scalable software solutions. I love the fact that it is open-source and that you can become part of such a strong and active Ruby community. RoR is a very mature, well-established framework, and one of the most promising ones too.

Horia Radu, Engineering Manager at [e-spres-oh]

Ruby’s many loveable features got us all hooked, and, just like with any other technology we’re enthusiastic about, we wanted to provide the right environment to grow and develop our passion.

Nurture a Continuous Learning Culture

The overly quoted phrase ‘innovate or die’ haunts the dreams of every tech entrepreneur who wakes up thinking ‘where to next?’ While possibilities are endless, resources are not. So how can you innovate constantly and stay afloat?

There’s no definite answer, but we’ve learned that there is actually one thing you can do to put a positive spin on the whole situation – nurture a continuous learning culture.

Constant improvement has always been one of our core values. Learning and sharing the know-how comes naturally to us and helps us reach our all-time goal: building innovative custom software with great energy.

Even after a decade of [e-spres-oh], continuous learning remains deeply ingrained in our culture. It has helped us build a stronger community, foster talent, and gain expertise faster; thus allowing us to push our vision forward.

Bring Value to Your Partners

The RoR expertise we’ve gained throughout the years makes us the perfect candidates when it comes to training fellow developers. One of our long-standing partners, Unifiedpost, reached out to us to help speed up their team’s development process by training the next generation of RoR developers.

And we did it. Over one month, two of our own Ruby developers delivered a custom training plan to help our client enhance its team’s performance and create new job opportunities. The course was designed to cover everything from basic theory to advanced practices, such as performing code reviews, implementing anonymous functions, and metaprogramming.

It feels rewarding to be able to help the next generation of developers discover the joy of programming in Ruby and the language’s simplicity and elegance – the very reason I fell in love with it in the first place.

Alex Ungureanu, Ruby on Rails Developer at [e-spres-oh]

Share the Know-How

While we’re on the topic of knowledge-sharing, growing the next generation of RoR developers has become a priority for us the past year. We’ve recently undertaken a mentoring role at Liga AC LABS, one of the most successful initiatives in connecting students to leading tech companies in Western Romania.

Our talented team of Ruby developers is currently having a blast teaching a 2+ months virtual course to a group of exceptional students who are eager to master the magic behind Ruby. Together they are building Qwizard, a game-based quiz platform that our team has developed specifically for the course, in order to teach students how to build a real-time web application from scratch. How cool is that?

Being a trainer at AC LABS is a great experience. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and excitement for RoR with the students and also helping them find ways to solve real problems with the newest technologies. Knowing that my efforts leave a small mark on the next generation of RoR developers makes every minute of it worthwhile. I am also lucky to be backed by a wonderful team and that definitely helps me manage everything.

Sorin Guga, Ruby on Rails Developer at [e-spres-oh]

Exchange Ideas Constantly

Apart from our weekly internal Demo sessions, which provide us with the perfect setup to share and discuss the industry’s best practices, we’re always on the lookout for exciting learning opportunities. We study hard to work smarter, not harder. Exchanging ideas with other tech professionals is not only refreshing but also helps us stay on top of the industry’s latest trends.

A recent example includes attending RailsConf, the largest gathering of RoR enthusiasts and practitioners, which helped boost our appetite for R&D even more.

RailsConf left us feeling empowered to try out new stuff. The ’Reactive Rails’ trend that we’ve been following closely for some time now took center stage at the conference; and the intense discussions around it made us want to experiment more. Having already built a functional app using Rails API and React, we decided to rewrite that application in Rails and use some front-end magic gems instead.

Ovidiu Bite, Software Engineer at [e-spres-oh] & Ruby enthusiast

These are some of the key steps we took in building our robust RoR expertise, and the journey continues. What we’ve learned along the way is that being driven by passion helps you grow talent and grow your business. And if some knowledge exchange happens naturally, by seizing every learning opportunity, you can make growth happen systematically too.

If you are as hooked on Ruby as we are, or if you know someone who is, spread the love and make sure to send them our way – precious projects are in the making. Speaking about projects, if yours could use a touch of magic, rest assured, you’ve just landed in the Ruby wizards’ tower. Summon us here, and we can work wonders together!