In this week’s Peeps of the Web, we interview Tiffani Bell, recent college graduate and a very spirited Ruby on Rails developer and consultant. Tiffani is a staunch supporter of Ruby on Rails as a web development language, and we used this interview to discuss how she got started with the Ruby language, the tools she uses to code in Ruby, and the pros and cons surrounding the language. Enjoy!

(6:50:21 PM) Black Web 2.0: Tell our readers who you are.
(6:51:23 PM) Tiffani: soo I’m Tiffani Ashley Bell, a recent college grad and someone really looking to do interesting stuff in the future. I’m a programmer and a 20-something and all the good stuff that goes with that.
(6:51:57 PM) Black Web 2.0: What’s your favorite language?
(6:52:14 PM) Tiffani: My favorite right now is Ruby but if you had asked me a few years back I would have said Java haha.
(6:52:23 PM) Tiffani: I learned a few lessons with that though.
(6:52:35 PM) Black Web 2.0: So what made you get into Ruby?
(6:52:55 PM) Tiffani: hmm way back in 2005, I was messing around with PHP and not really having a good time with it.
(6:53:25 PM) Tiffani: I thought it was ugly and I was not a fan of having so much mixed into the code for it…HTML and PHP and sometimes SQL all in one place
(6:53:39 PM) Tiffani: I mean, even after you clean it up, it’s still bad to look at (for me, at least).
(6:53:56 PM) Tiffani: I was messing around one day during an internship at IBM and discovered Rails and that was it.
(6:54:16 PM) Tiffani: I’ve always liked the web and so that was a perfect tool.
(6:54:34 PM) Tiffani: and of course, with Rails, you have to have knowledge of Ruby, so that’s where Ruby comes in
(6:55:36 PM) Black Web 2.0: How difficult was Ruby to learn?
(6:56:48 PM) Tiffani: hmmm it’s not too difficult. If you have some programming experience, you can really get into it quite quickly. It’s really big on expressive and with that, comes great readability, so even if you don’t have programming experience, if you start small it’s not too bad either
(6:56:59 PM) Tiffani: and there’s tons of material online for it
(6:57:17 PM) Tiffani: and that’s grown since Rails has really brought it to the forefront, since Ruby has been around long before Rails
(6:57:38 PM) Tiffani: tryruby.hobix.com is a site I directed a friend to the other night
(6:57:44 PM) Tiffani: 15 minute interactive tutorial
(6:57:49 PM) Black Web 2.0: cool
(6:58:05 PM) Black Web 2.0: so where do you work, what do you do?
(6:58:23 PM) Tiffani: haha so I just graduate from Howard U (Go Bison!) in May 2008 with a degree in Computer Science
(6:58:43 PM) Tiffani: ever since then I’ve been working on bringing to fruition a few of the ideas I had during school but never had time to devote to fully
(6:58:57 PM) Black Web 2.0: HBCU in the building
(6:59:00 PM) Tiffani: indeed!
(6:59:15 PM) Tiffani: so you could really I’m a one-person startup right now
(6:59:36 PM) Black Web 2.0: any projects you wish to share?
(7:00:04 PM) Tiffani: umm…not any that are finished. I would give a plug to an app called Pencil You In that I’m writing which will be big on appointments
(7:00:20 PM) Tiffani: folks handle so much online nowadays such as banking and shopping, so I would argue why not appointments too
(7:01:01 PM) Tiffani: it’s more on appointments with salons/beauticians since during school I had the problem where I often couldn’t reach my beautician but I didn’t want to dump him because of that
(7:01:24 PM) Tiffani: but I figured there had to be some way to make an appointment with him in the event that I couldn’t reach him for some reason
(7:01:45 PM) Tiffani: and now I figure it would be useful since I’m back at home in NC and without somebody I trust for a beautician
(7:02:14 PM) Black Web 2.0: are you open to consulting?
(7:02:29 PM) Tiffani: yeah right now I’d be open to a few projects
(7:03:02 PM) Tiffani: actually in a few months I’ll be starting on a project for JC Lamkin at Technically Speaking radio (http://technically-speaking-radio.blogspot.com)
(7:03:07 PM) Tiffani: and I’ll be her official Ruby tutor
(7:04:36 PM) Black Web 2.0: so if you had to convince programmers to switch to Rails what would the key selling points be?
(7:05:54 PM) Tiffani: I would have them consider how productive you can be, the community behind the Rails framework, and the fact that you’ll be working with Ruby which is a great tool even without Rails
(7:06:32 PM) Tiffani: I’d say in just the 3 months since graduation, I’ve been able to accomplish a lot that if I had used Java or something else I wouldn’t have
(7:06:36 PM) Tiffani: Rails just works
(7:06:47 PM) Black Web 2.0: great!
(7:06:51 PM) Tiffani: you’ll hear people talk about convention over configuration and all that sort of stuff, and it’s no exaggeration
(7:07:22 PM) Tiffani: with Java and servlets and all that sort of stuff, you’d have to worry about lengthy comfit files and builds and compiling and such but not with Ruby
(7:07:41 PM) Tiffani: it’s an interpreted language, so there’s no compilation and thus you don’t have to wait with that
(7:08:21 PM) Black Web 2.0: great pitch
(7:08:27 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:08:27 PM) Tiffani: haha thanks
(7:08:38 PM) Tiffani: I hope you’re sold since you said you’re into PHP
(7:08:45 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:08:50 PM) Tiffani: ohh but another thing too I remember
(7:08:53 PM) Tiffani: sorry
(7:08:56 PM) Tiffani: I get excited about this lol
(7:08:58 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:09:16 PM) Tiffani: Rails follows the MVC convention which makes it lean further toward being easier to work with
(7:09:37 PM) Tiffani: MVC = Model-View-Controller, so you have a great separation of concerns going on
(7:09:49 PM) Tiffani: where all the code for my Model is business logic
(7:09:56 PM) Tiffani: the View ends up being what the user sees
(7:10:16 PM) Tiffani: and the controller stands in the middle and takes cues from the view to interact with the model
(7:10:40 PM) Tiffani: and from that you’re able to go consistently from one Rails project to another because you have this project structure that follows that very closely
(7:10:50 PM) Tiffani: you have a folder for your models, your views, your controllers, etc
(7:10:55 PM) Tiffani: so everything is in its place
(7:11:15 PM) Tiffani: and that makes it ultra-easy to work with once you really get the MVC concept down
(7:11:24 PM) Tiffani: that’s something I struggled at first, but once you get it, it’s great
(7:13:07 PM) Black Web 2.0: ok so now on to the good questions
(7:13:12 PM) Tiffani: lol ok
(7:14:08 PM) Black Web 2.0: what do you do for fun?
(7:14:13 PM) Tiffani: hahahah
(7:14:17 PM) Black Web 2.0: when you’re off the computer
(7:14:32 PM) Tiffani: when I was in DC, you could find me in the mall lol
(7:14:52 PM) Tiffani: mostly at a bookstore though since it financially made no sense for me to be anywhere else lol
(7:15:01 PM) Black Web 2.0: no malls in NC?
(7:15:21 PM) Tiffani: hmm…I’d say the one in Fayetteville, NC constitutes one that I stay frustrated with
(7:15:34 PM) Tiffani: nothing interesting and they CLOSED the Waldenbooks to put a Build-a-Bear store.
(7:15:37 PM) Tiffani: what a bad idea.
(7:15:43 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:15:54 PM) Tiffani: but otherwise, me and my mom head up to Raleigh/Durham to get our shop on
(7:16:08 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:16:38 PM) Black Web 2.0: so what’s your weapon of choice Mac or PC?
(7:16:42 PM) Tiffani: a Mac.
(7:16:47 PM) Tiffani: anything else is questionable
(7:16:51 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:17:03 PM) Tiffani: right now I’m on a MacBook Pro and before that it was an iBook
(7:17:11 PM) Tiffani: before that in high school it was a Compaq
(7:17:22 PM) Tiffani: but the first computer I ever got was a Mac and I was always excited by it lol
(7:17:39 PM) Tiffani: I always said when I had the money to pick out my own computer, I’d get a Mac and I stuck to it
(7:17:55 PM) Tiffani: I’m a sucker for good design even if it’s a bit pricey.
(7:18:13 PM) Black Web 2.0: what editor do you use?
(7:18:41 PM) Tiffani: for coding you can find me happily coding away with Textmate
(7:19:04 PM) Tiffani: macromates.com
(7:19:24 PM) Tiffani: it’s probably the most popular one amongst Rails developers on OS X
(7:19:38 PM) Tiffani: with the dollar being weak, it’s pricey, but it’s worth it for all its features
(7:20:03 PM) Black Web 2.0: funny I don’t know any Rails developers who use PCs
(7:20:10 PM) Black Web 2.0: coincidence? I think not
(7:20:14 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:20:15 PM) Tiffani: of course not lol
(7:20:31 PM) Tiffani: yeah OS X does a lot to make the Rails experience smooth
(7:20:39 PM) Tiffani: with OS X Leopard, you got support right out of the box
(7:20:48 PM) Tiffani: Rails came installed
(7:21:11 PM) Black Web 2.0: last question
(7:21:21 PM) Tiffani: alrighty
(7:21:32 PM) Black Web 2.0: your top 5 musicians
(7:21:37 PM) Tiffani: hahahha
(7:23:07 PM) Tiffani: it changes from day to day depending on what I’m doing, but I know that Amel Larrieux (that seriously won’t change—been a favorite since 9th grade), The Chemical Brothers, Bonobo, and….hmm
(7:23:13 PM) Tiffani: let me think on the last 2
(7:24:13 PM) Tiffani: hm Georgia Anne Muldrow and Muhsinah
(7:24:19 PM) Tiffani: Muhsinah’s an HU alum by the way
(7:24:31 PM) Tiffani: my tastes flip between stuff people have never heard of and stuff folks have
(7:24:46 PM) Black Web 2.0: I’m so wack i have only heard of 2 of the artist you’ve named
(7:24:47 PM) Tiffani: if I’m coding, I’ll dig out all the instrumentals from everybody
(7:24:48 PM) Tiffani: lol
(7:24:58 PM) Tiffani: nahh that’s probably me!
(7:25:02 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:25:10 PM) Tiffani: I get excited when people have heard of that many honestly lol
(7:25:21 PM) Tiffani: here’s everything else you’ll find on loop: http://www.last.fm/user/infamoux
(7:25:28 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:25:36 PM) Black Web 2.0: alrighty
(7:25:43 PM) Black Web 2.0: I had a blast talking to you
(7:25:47 PM) Tiffani: same here!
(7:25:59 PM) Tiffani: I got to talk somebody’s head off about Ruby today lol
(7:26:05 PM) Black Web 2.0: lol
(7:26:11 PM) Black Web 2.0: I enjoyed it.