rails symphonies

So the Malaysia Ruby Brigade, had our first (informal) meetup. Three people showed up, so it was more like a get together gathering of some of the Ruby enthusiasts in Malaysia. Kegan, Kamal, and myself were the ones present. The gathering took place at The Curve in Starbucks (Borders) before moving to the other Starbucks, as the Borders one was closing shop.

I’ve never met any of these people before…

Before I arrived, Kegan messaged me asking how he would recognize me. I replied “look for the stereotype hacker :)”. As he gave details about his attire, I spotted him immediately and played my role as random bystander purchasing a drink. I guess I make a good actor, or he was unsure if I was the guy he was looking for. After getting my drink, I just introduced myself. Kamal came a short while after.

There was a lot of topics discussed:

• Individual backgrounds
• Google
• Apple
• MacBooks and MacBook Pros
• Textmate
• Frameworks
• Web 2.0
• Opportunities in Malaysia
• Ruby
• Rails
• Agile Development

All between the hours of 8pm to midnight.

It’s cool as these guys are very passionate about what they do. Hope I can get more people joining in next time.

Malaysia Ruby Brigade Trivia: Kamal is now a Rails contributor.

Hence forth in the battlegrounds of the Internet, I stake a claim in various IP address ranges in the name of the Malaysia Ruby Brigade.

Joining the ranks of other Brigades around the world, Singapore, Seattle, Portland, a group of Ruby enthusiasts have come together to form a coalition to advance the state of Ruby in Malaysia.

It’s time to get in line soldiers!

Spread the word, the Malaysia Ruby Brigade is recruiting new personnel to clean the the barracks, wash the dishes, and drive me around.

Beware PHPers as we will cut through your spaghetti barrier defense, with our modular mix-ins!

Java-ians, you better watch out as we, we will enslave your notorious XML and inflict thee with they fury of the YAML. It will almost be like freeing you from the pain you stupidly inflicted on yourself.

To the Pythonista bretherens, even though we find you short sighted, you share a similar resemblance amongst us, as if we were raised together like brothers. We open doors to you to take up arms at Ruby Brigade. Though only at the lowest ranks, you get the opportunity to be target practice, and if you do really well you get to do our dirty laundry.

To the others, we gladly accept any challenge to bear arms!

Towards a purification of the source code!

So you have this great Web 2.0 idea waiting to be made, and your sold out on Ruby on rails. Now your looking for a someone to create a Rails application for you, and your wondering to yourself “Where do I find Rails professionals in Malaysia?” I myself am wondering the same thing.

Lucky for us the community behind the lovely Ruby on Rails is giving us helping hand. Working With Rails aims to achieve just that, making it easier to find Rails professionals all around the world. From Afghanistan to Vietnam. Lucky for us Malaysia has an outstanding 12 Rails developers. So there are more than it seems, of which I only know a few of them.

Luckily this doesn’t put us in the least number of listed developers. Which at the moment standing at only 1 developer is: Bahrain, Cambodia, Cook Islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Honduras, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malta, Martinique, Morocco, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Tanzania, and Tunisia.

Of course this doesn’t include countries with 0 developers.

Similarly it doesn’t put us in the highest with the United States at 1362.

So are these Malaysian developers actually professionals? I wouldn’t know, but at least there is some capacity out there. So if you are looking to hire a Rails developer, at least you have somewhere to start looking.

So if your Malaysian, sign up. In fact, if you are from anywhere and doing Rails development, sign up.

Let’s build Rails capacity together!