ROSS conf - Blog

We decided to do short interviews with all of our ROSS conf Berlin speakers, so you can get to know them better. Meet Piotr Solnica, the maintainer of Ruby Object Mapper - an open-source persistence and mapping toolkit for Ruby.

How did you get into Ruby?

I saw Ruby for the first time around 2003 as a couple of plugins for the media player that I used back then were written in Ruby. I thought “looks cool” and learned some basic syntax. Then I started my first job but that was mostly PHP and some Java. Over time I got really tired of PHP and decided to switch to…Python. I started learning it, got pretty far and enjoyed it but then one day my friend asked me “hey, since you’re into web-development, did you check out Ruby on Rails?”. Few months later I started my first job as a ruby/rails developer, that was in 2007.

What do you like best about working on Open Source Software? And what do you like least?

I like when somebody finds my projects helpful, this always motivates me a lot. The least favorite part is the constant lack of time to do all the things I’d like to do, especially when it comes to supporting users of my projects.

Any side project you are currently working on?

Yes. I decided to write a book about my approach to Ruby and web-development. First step is to build a custom stack built on top of Roda and ROM toolkits.

Personal life hack or tool you couldn't do without?

Kanbanflow. It’s an online kanban board with a builtin pomodoro timer. I can’t live without it. I use it to manage my client work, OSS work and various personal todos.

You can come hack on Ruby Object Mapper with Piotr at ROSS conf Berlin. Get your ticket if you haven't done so yet!

Posted on Aug 25 by Floor