Here at Killswitch we have a number of fantastic developers from many different backgrounds. Everyone has unique perspectives and experience to bring to the table. Both at Killswitch and in the Rails community as a whole, developers fall into two large categories: developers who started as designers, and developers who started out in computer science.

Superficially, it seems strange that people from two very different fields end up in the same place. Designers often don't want to have anything to do with programming, and many computer science people sneer at 'scripting' languages, viewing them as inferior in performance and functionality to more traditional languages. Upon further examination, though, having developers from both backgrounds makes perfect sense. Many Web designers are interested in the internal back-end workings of their projects and get involved in the programming side of Web development. On the other side, many computer science students are not as enamored with the older, more traditional languages, and want to work with an exciting new language like Ruby.

Ruby and Rails is a large contributing factor to these groups coming together. Rails lowers the barriers of entry to get started building dynamic websites, yet offers a depth of nuance to satisfy even the most diehard of code monkeys. It is a dynamic, living framework, actively being improved daily by thousands of community contributors. Most importantly, though, it makes developing fun for both designer and traditionalist alike.

One Goal, Two Approaches

While we may all use the same language and pursue the same technical goals, differences in backgrounds lead to different approaches to different problems. For example, take looping through a collection in Ruby. Ruby provides two ways to do this: Enumerable#each and for...in. Both do the same job, and both are perfectly valid. However, background loosely dictates the approach used. Those who learned Ruby or Ruby-like languages first tend to use each, while those who learned languages like C first lean toward for...in instead.

In a broader view than idiom choice, differences in background bring different perspectives to development. One developer may work on presentation and visual design first and develop the back-end system to match, where another may start with the framework and work their way to design. Both approaches are valid, but represent a difference in background inherent in Web development. When combined, the end result can amount to more than what any individual approach or component could be alone.

Sum of the Parts

While we each have our own individual tendencies and strengths, the best work comes out of the fusion of both perspectives. We all strive to make ourselves and each other better programmers and better designers, constantly learning both individually and as a whole. In sharing past experiences, current struggles and future plans, we can take the best aspects of our dual-developer citizenship and create something worthy of our combined talent.