Thank You Ruby On Rails



I have just finished watching Ruby on Rails: The Documentary, which was created by the team at Honeypot and is now live on YouTube.

This framework has had such a profound and positive impact on my life, that I feel compelled to publicly acknowledge those who created it and to express my gratitude.

As a child and young adult, web development and software engineering were not things, which I showed any real interest in.

It was only after spending 5 or 6 years in the business world, that I developed a keen interest and passion for engineering.

This prompted me to enrol in a web development bootcamp, in late 2015.

As someone, who had never written a line of code in his life, I found the learning curve to be incredible steep and there were certainly times, when I was ready to throw in the towel. Fortunately, I managed to persevere and come out the other side.

It was during this bootcamp that I first became aware of the Ruby programming language and Rails, as a web development framework, which simplified the process of building and deploying applications, to the web.

Like so many people, who write their first lines of code, hit deploy and see their work published to the world, I was struck by a profound sense of excitement and limitless possibility.

The magic and beauty of Ruby on Rails, is found in it's powerful simplicity.

All it takes, is a few command line prompts, along with some accompanying lines, of beautifully readable code and you can publish a full stack application to the web, in minutes.

After learning the basics, I was fortunate enough to land a job with a web development agency in Brighton called Datanauts, which was founded by Pete Osborne and Simon Brook. Thank You both for taking a chance on me and for welcoming me into an environment, where I was able to learn so much, in such a short space of time. During this period of time, I was also fortunate enough to collaborate with Andy Croll, who runs the Brighton Ruby Conference.

After some really happy times in Brighton, I landed a job with an EdTech company in London called Pobble. It was here that I had the distinct pleasure of working with some wonderful people and a great team of engineers. I would like to extend a special Thank You to Tomas Valent, who is an incredibly talented engineer and someone, from whom I have learned such a great deal.

As an entrepreneur by nature, it was always my intention, to use my engineering skills, to solve real world business problems.

And so it was, that I founded Stacked in 2020, in an effort to the revolutionise the property investment industry.

Stacked started life as a full stack Ruby on Rails application, before gradually evolving into a Rails API, which is paired with a React front end and connected together with GraphQL.

Stacked now has thousands of customers, who have used our platform to stack, somewhere between 500 million and 1 billion pounds worth of real estate deals.

None of this would have been possible without the Ruby on Rails framework and the incredible community of developers, who have contributed so much time and energy, to power this incredible ecosystem.

In addition to thanking the core Rails team, I would also like to thank the founders of 37Signals, who have played such an important role in supporting developers and early-stage tech entrepreneurs, through their products, books, articles and podcasts.

So here's to you David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. 

Thank You to everyone, who has made this incredible journey possible. 

With the Ruby and Rails communities being as vibrant now, as they have ever been, I look forward to connecting with more community members and seeing what the future holds.