Howdy, Foreigner

If you made it this far, we’ve something in common.

And that something is probably the taste for simple things.

Yes friend, the world has become a noisy place. It’s not a peaceful, calm site where we can share ideas and build beautiful things anymore.

As a developer, I always wanted to create useful craft. Simple art, efficient, clean, lightweight.

And in the middle of everything else, frameworks, RAM starving libraries and tools have taken place.

This world is full of varied aspirations, I’d say.

Some look for aesthetics and pleasure, while others seek performance or stability, but every technology has its tradeoffs, an implicit cost.

I love simplicity, but I must recognize that sometimes, creating tools is not a simple task. Just as an example, Javascript was created in one week, and took years to become a decent language. It was born from urgency, and then became the browser’s standard.

Even when we look for some particular feature, in the end we’ll be swept along, influenced by some priority, having to make a choice.

As time goes by, I become more and more confident about the things I’d like to choose. It seems natural to expect that experience alone will give us a broader awareness about the decisions we’ll make.

I’ve chosen Ruby as my main language because it’s beautiful, and it makes perfect sense that Matz has picked the “best programmer’s friend” language as its motto. It’s not only accurate, but it’s also true that Ruby gives me a lot of fun while programming.

Many can argue about Ruby’s performance, but for most tasks it’s more than enough, as long as we avoid heavy processing tasks like media editing.

I’m also an advocate of Linux and UNIX in general, as these systems have proven its value along the way.

It’s not that I only use Ruby, in fact.

For some projects I used C, and it’s a great language, can’t speak of how much I admire it.

There are particular cases when you would prefer Javascript, mostly because of the Node ecosystem. And the obvious web socket libraries that are amazing.

Yet, many other languages are incredibly amazing, like Elixir (or even Erlang), OCaml and so on.

I have my preferences but the main point is that some perform better in specific area, while others don’t.

Also it seems obvious that we should pick the best tool for the job, but sometimes people forget about that.

In this blog we’ll cover most tools used by me over time, deployment ideas and also options on a budget.

Hope you enjoy it, see you along the journey!

■