A community architect who helped build the gatherings and the nonprofit that hold the Ruby world together, and wrote the career book many programmers grew up on.
Chad Fowler is one of the people who built the Ruby community’s institutions. With David Alan Black he helped organize the early RubyConf gatherings and, in 2001, co-founded Ruby Central, the nonprofit created to run those conferences and take on the growing work of finding sponsors and hosting ever-larger events. Ruby Central went on to launch RailsConf in 2006, the first official Ruby on Rails conference, and for years RubyConf and RailsConf were the community’s two biggest yearly get-togethers. By his own account, Chad co-organized RubyConf from 2001 to 2012 and founded and co-organized RailsConf from 2006 to 2012, and he was a co-creator of RubyGems, the tool Rubyists use to share and install libraries.
He is also the author of “The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development.” It first appeared in 2005 under the memorable title “My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book): 52 Ways to Save Your Job,” written out of his experience setting up an offshore development center in India, and was revised and retitled for its second edition in 2009. He co-authored “Programming Ruby” and wrote “Rails Recipes” as well.
Chad has a whole other life outside code: he is an avant-garde jazz saxophonist who in 2019 founded the record label Mahakala Music with drummer Steve Hirsh. It is a fitting detail for someone whose Ruby legacy is less about a single library and more about composition: bringing people together, in rooms and in a lasting organization, around a language that Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto made for joy.
Related: Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto · Sarah Mei · David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)
Sources
Sources
- Chad Fowler’s own site (roles, RubyConf and RailsConf organizing years, RubyGems co-creation, books, Mahakala Music founded 2019): https://chadfowler.com/
- Ruby Central: About (Ruby Central founded 2001 by David Alan Black and Chad Fowler; RailsConf launched 2006): https://rubycentral.org/about/
- Ruby Central (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Central
- The Passionate Programmer, 2nd edition (Pragmatic Bookshelf; the 2009 retitled edition of the 2005 “My Job Went to India”): https://pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer-2nd-edition/