When we think of programming, we may tend to think of Matrix-esque nerds sat in front of green-on-black screens absorbed in code that makes less sense than a chocolate teapot, or we may think of super-star game developers bashing out the latest GTA or similar. The reality is that programming is very much a problem solving exercise, and languages like Ruby provide a set of tools for how to map out logic and present results to the average computer user.  Our guest this week is a long-time friend of the show, Joel Drapper, who has recently been working on some powerful new open-source Ruby libraries that can help developers speed up their work and save a lot of confusion. Joel also tells us a bit about his own journey to becoming a programmer, and points to some great resources for those who are interested to get started themselves. We’d love to hear from you, so please send us a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, or why not come join the discussion on our Discord server. If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page. Affiliate Promotion If you want great pricing with fantastic customer support for all your Linux based cloud computing needs, you can get $100 of free credit with Linode, cloud computing by Akamai, when you sign up here. Episode Links Joel Drapper: Mastodon / Naming Things / GitHub Rooftop Ruby – Joel and Colin’s Ruby podcast. Practical Object-Oriented Design, An Agile Primer Using Ruby – A starting guide to Ruby. Grokking Algorithms – An illustrated guide to understanding how algorithms work. Treehouse – A great online resource for learning Ruby and other tech stuff. Chapter Times 00:00:04: Introductions 00:03:12: Self Taught 00:15:00: Front-end vs backend 00:18:52: Learning Resources 00:26:14: Solving Problems 00:28:36: Open Source Software Libraries 00:51:02: Wrapping Up Credits Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW