The Apprentice
A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can't give you a formula for that.
~ Chet Atkins
It has been quite a while since I have had the pleasure to apprentice someone.
aimee , my last (and current) apprentice is very doing pretty well as a contractor currently and has walked a long way in her long road already. Before you think otherwise, she is still mentored by me, but the nature of her apprenticeship has changed quite a bit. She is a very talented developer and, as part of her apprenticeship, we are focusing on different things at the moment.
With aimee taking on a new apprentice she made me realise that the time has come I do the same again.
So I lay it on you, I am looking for an apprentice.
The person I am looking for is a person who wants to learn everything from the software development business, someone passionate and humble, someone with an empty cup.
I want to be your apprentice!
If you are thinking that you'd like to be my apprentice there are a couple of things you should know first.
- The mentor/apprentice relationship, although changing over time is a lifelong endeavour.
- You should be passionate about your profession.
- You need to be humble, capable of listening to others and helping people, even (and specially) if helping them will not give you any gain or advantage.
- You need to be prepared to be stretched. I can asure you that I will do all my best to make sure you are way out of your comfort zone.
- You need to be prepared to fail in public. There is nothing wrong with it, you have to accept that you are not perfect and expose your ignorance.
- You need to be clear that software development requires a lot of practice and that walking the long road is not a short trip, but a lifelong journey.
- You understand that learning is not a one shot challenge to pass an exam or test but a perpetual exercise
What's next?
If you really think you are prepared to walk the long road alongside me then there is one little thing you still need to do. I have a coding challenge I want you to do before you choose to contact me.
The Challenge
I want you to write a blogging engine in The Ruby Language without using any external gem or library. You have to write it Test Driven (at this point I cannot say test first as I will not see what you are doing while you are doing it), but you will not use Test::Unit to do so. You will need to figure out by yourself what needs to be done to test your blog.
Once you have finished your blog send me a reference to it (I would prefer to see it on Github ) so that I can look at your code. Obviously, when you write me, you can (and should) tell me something about you and what your motivations are.
Contact me here.
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