The Life of a Radar

I won a Ruby Hero award in 2011 for my work on documentation for Rails. I keep some guides in my guides repository on GitHub. As part of this documentation, I've worked on the Asset Pipeline, Active Record Query Interface, Configuring Rails Applications, Getting Started with Engines and the Rails Initialization Internals guides. I've also been known to hang out on Stack Overflow.

If you're a recruiter, thanks but no thanks. Please do not contact me.

Occasionally I find some time to write interesting blog posts such as the ones you see below.

I also have done quite a lot of open-source work and I tweet. Find out more about me.

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Oh, and I once beat DHH in an argument.

My name's Ryan Bigg and I enjoy writing (text + code) more than most "normal" people would deem normal. On a good day of writing, I can write about 10,000 words. On a bad day, probably 1,500.

I am currently gainfully employed at Spree Commerce as the Community Manager there. My job is to make your life with Spree an amazing experience. I triage issues, reply to users' questions on the mailing list and spend the remainder of that time developing on Spree.

I wrote a book called Rails 3 in Action with Yehuda Katz, which you should buy, as it teaches you how to develop a Rails application the right way using BDD and TDD best practices.

If you're a recruiter contacting me for a job, don't waste your time. I am not currently looking.

I've been doing Ruby and Rails for about the past 5 years and I consider myself an expert at it. Just look at my Stack Overflow score. I don't profess to know everything, I just know a lot and I've got a fair bit of experience in developing Rails applications. To be honest: I learned a lot of what I know from spending way too much time in the #rubyonrails IRC channel on Freenode and Stack Overflow.

I write mostly about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, I've even written a book on it! Other times I write about the community in general in such posts as You suck., Advanced Rails Documentation and When to Cuke.

Super-popular posts of mine include the Ubuntu, Ruby, RVM, Rails, and You and its "sequel" Mac OS X, Ruby, RVM, Rails and You, as well as Congratulations, a post based on a true story about doing Test Driven Development.

I've done a lot of work on the official Rails guides, enough to be ranked #17 for all time Rails committers at the time of writing. I've done this by writing such interesting guides as the first copy of the Active Record Querying Guide as well as beginning work on Rails Internals: The Rails 3 Initialization Process, which is quite a massive beast and one day I will complete it. I also helped out with the Configuring Rails Applications guide, updating it to Rails 3, and played a large part in the Asset Pipeline Guide.

I'm also writing other guides that don't fit into the Rails guides over on my personal guides repository.

Besides writing Gigantic Walls of Text, I also write code. Some of my favourite projects to work on are forem (a lightweight forum engine built for Rails 3.1+ applications), octopi (a gem that interacts with the GitHub API) and summer, a tiny IRC bot framework (with inspiration from autumn.

Over my development life I've worked with many, many teams developing Rails applications.

In 2010, I introduced a small team of PHP developers at GetUp to Ruby on Rails and the best practices (such as BDD and Agile) associated with it. All of the developers, aside from one, are now doing Ruby on Rails development professionally. The one that's not has chosen to study anthropology, but still has a passion for Rails development.

In 2011, I worked as a Ruby on Rails consultant for RubyX in Sydney. It was my favourite consulting job so far. I performed code reviews, training and application development and really enjoyed it.

In November of 2011, I left RubyX after being offered a job by Spree Commerce to work full time as a community manager and developer of the Spree e-commerce platform. This is now my current job.

I am not actively looking for any more jobs. I said this before, but it bears repeating. If you still really really really feel like contacting me about a job, include the phrase "Bravo Foxtrot Uniform" so I know that you've done your research.

I've recently moved to Melbourne (originally from Adelaide, but I've also lived in Brisbane and Sydney). I attend the local user group meetups when I can, and all the Australian Railscamps, one of which I helped run. I have been known to travel great distances to attend greater conferences. I enjoy speaking and am open for any opportunities in that area.

If you need help with anything Ruby or Rails related, ask me and I can probably help you or get you contact with someone who can. Or you could read my book :)