Gratitude for those who shaped me
Tags: ruby, rails, gratitude, unitedkingdom
Published: 2017-03-27 16:26:41

---
title: Gratitude for those who shaped me
published: true
description: On this, my last day of work in the UK before my family and I move to Vancouver, Canada, I want to thank those friends and colleagues who have supported and guided me professionally on my Ruby journey.
cover_image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Ruby_logo.svg/1000px-Ruby_logo.svg.png
tags: Ruby, Rails, Gratitude, United Kingdom
---

> You are who you are by virtue of the company you keep - *T. B. Joshua*

> The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best - *Epictetus*

On this, my last day of work in the UK before my family and I move to Vancouver, Canada, I want to thank those friends and colleagues who have supported and guided me professionally on my Ruby journey. Over the last 11 years I have grown in experience and skill as a Ruby developer thanks to the example and shared knowledge of these folks.

It was [Andrew Threlfall](https://twitter.com/adthrelfall) who introduced me to Ruby on Rails in 2006 when I worked for his company LiquidBronze. We got [Paul Robinson](https://twitter.com/p7r) in to show us the ropes and my steep learning curve from PHP began! [Ian Moss](https://twitter.com/oceanician) joined the company as I left and since then I have worked on various Ruby projects with each of them as I went freelance. We even ran a co-working co-operative in Manchester City Center called FlyThe.Coop together.

As a freelancer, my early days were spent mainly on PHP projects, but I started dabbling with [OpenData](http://www.opendatamanchester.org.uk/) and through a retainer with [Chris Jelley](https://twitter.com/chris_jelley)'s company, BeSupported, I was able to work on some meaty Rails projects. It was while working for Chris that I had my moment of enlightenment about writing tests for my code, I still remember that moment vividly!

From 2012 I worked from [Tekin Suleyman](https://twitter.com/tekin)'s office with 3 other Ruby developers, [Ric Roberts](https://twitter.com/RicRoberts), [Graham Ashton](https://twitter.com/grahamashton) and [Ed Forshaw](https://twitter.com/edforshaw). Working in the same space with such great developers provided me with a great input of best-practice, new approaches and confidence. During that time we started the Bootstrapped Startup Group since we all had side-projects we hoped would make it big.

I then joined [Volcanic](https://www.volcanic.co.uk/) as CTO to build a platform for Recruitment Company websites. As the Technical Co-founder and a Ruby developer, [Rob Wilde](https://twitter.com/robert_wilde) challenged and pushed me with his innovative thinking and focus on efficiency. I reconnected with an old skateboarding friend, [Carpet](https://twitter.com/partycarpet), who was already at Volcanic and enjoyed the challenges and camaraderie of building the product and team, specifically working closely with [Matt Whiteley](https://www.volcanic.co.uk/consultants/matthew-whiteley-1) after we moved to London.

I also want to thank the [Ruby](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) and [Rails](http://rubyonrails.org/) community. I have built a career on the open source tools created by these dedicated and intelligent people who have created a uniquely supportive community which was expressed to me locally through the folks at the [North West Ruby User Group](http://nwrug.org/).

As I leave the UK for Canada (through a new Job with [Chimp](https://chimp.net/) thanks to my Ruby skill and experience), I feel sincerely grateful to these guys who have helped guide, shape and challenge me professionally - Thank you!