Hi there! How's it going?

Looks like you've found this lil page. If you haven't noticed, I've been adding little level up amounts for each tip and trick and post I've made thus far. Think of it as how much knowledge you've gained by reading it. The higher the number, the more you will have likely learned something. Is there a way to keep track of all this? Ehhhhh, do it mentally.

Level up

+1: Super simple quick tip
+10: Betcha didn't know about this, eh?
+25: Ooh, this might require a bit more effort
+50: Whoa, we have one of these?

Mini Rant

I'm all about spreading the love and knowledge. It shouldn't be for certain people only. We're all in this together, from senior devs to bootcamp-grads. Encourage everyone to learn. Teach. Listen. Share. Don't ever give the ol' cop out reply of "RTFM!" It's totally cool to say that you don't know the answer. Yeah we all know there are man pages and docs, but not all of us learn that way. Truthfully, those very docs/man pages can be very intimidating to those of us who are just starting. In any case, we all don't learn the same way; some of us learn by doing, others learn with examples, some by reading the docs, and others who need pictures.

When you raise someone up, you raise up everyone in the community.

Here's a couple of little stories: I was dreadfully afraid of Postgres when I first started my ol' job as a support engineer. One of my first major tasks was to write documentation on how to import and export with Postgres. It was hella confusing and the docs were incredibly intimidating since it looked all Greek to me. Luckily, our tech lead/senior dev on the team was our 'database guy' who took the time to explain some of the finer details, in particular knowing when to use pg_restore and psql. Once I had a bit more understanding of this, I hit up Google and StackOverflow and even the Postgres docs. I was starting to understand and wasn't afraid anymore. He probably doesn't even remember helping me, but it made a huge impact on my life. For that, I'm forever grateful. Thanks Toby! You're the best.

Of course, I can't forget to give a shout-out to my colleague and mentor who's helped me grow as a developer. Whenever I had questions, he would either teach me if he knew the answer or he'd say "hey, let's give it a go and see what happens!" and would pair with me while we would read the docs and hack at an issue to resolve it. He was always patient and knew that I understood concepts when he would draw them out. Hey, I'm a visual learner. I learned a lot of things from him, most notably DNS management and the asset pipeline. Yeah, he took the asset pipeline and broke it down into 3 simple sentences, and voila! Everything clicked. I attribute my knowledge (and article and presentations) to him. Again, the docs weren't so bad once I kind of had a clue. To that end, Ryan, you rock! Thank you!