My name is Casey Provost. I am a Ruby on Rails developer and have been for about ten years now. Yes that’s right I’m getting old. When I started programming I chose PHP as my engine and for years it helped me do things I never could before like submit contact forms, power applications, execute background tasks, and so much more. I even used frameworks that you may have heard of like Symfony, Code Igniter, and the dreaded and almost unknown QCoda. If you don’t believe me on how bad that last one is, just google it, download it, and try to use it. Think ok ASP web forms for PHP, and if you don’t know what those are just look at their docs.

My journey has taken me through ups and downs, IPOs, and company sales. Back when I was 23 I thought I was amazing and that Rails had no issues at all and was nothing short of god-like. After a few more years of the forced scaling of apps, adding complexity of APIs and Integrations, and working with people far more talented than myself I learned everything I knew was wrong. While RoR definitely does have it’s advantages, it does not do everything well.

I have worked for years in the medical and financial sectors which may have jaded me. I have learned many invaluable things though like real security and privacy laws. I have also learned in some of the most challenging sectors where complexity is crazy high and room for failure is staggeringly low. In our world of startups today where failures are no big deal and happen all the time, it is a wonderfully nice balance of perspective.

Alright back to my personal life.

In 2008 I got just about the greatest gift one could receive, a bouncing baby boy. My son Issac is probably my biggest fan and my second best friend. We do everything together like play Minecraft, build igloos, race bicycles, and even travel together. However he now is contested, because in August of 2016 I asked my very best friend Sidney to marry me. We will be married in September of 2017 and everyone will come at least second to her for the rest of our lives.

When I am not hanging with my family, I spend a lot of time cycling. While some may argue that my frequency of injury means I should perhaps limit my time on a bike; I took it as a challenge and now have a road cycling bike and a mountain bike to maximize the amount of time in the saddle! I have raced all over the state, but really enjoy bringing the family every Wednesday in the summer to our local track race. And yes I am one of those crazy people that ride 80-100miles per ride more than once per year.

The day to day around my house is damn near perfect, and everyone loves that I work from home. Even though sometimes I have to close and lock the door to bar my son from running in during a Hangout! At my desk I usually have one of our two cats on my lap, two seductively sleek studio monitors on each side of my face, and my brilliantly shining Macbook pro. Can you really ask for anything more?