Q&A - Nathaniel Talbott on Ruby and the Well-Rounded Programmer

In this exclusive interview, Agile Coach Jared Richardson talks to Ruby veteran Nathaniel Talbott about his current projects, the Ruby community, and more.  Talbot created Test::Unit, a framework for unit testing in Ruby and runs a training and consulting company called Terralien.

The interview starts off with Talbott describing his experience running Terralien for the past three years and how he experienced feelings of 'grumpiness' brought on by a lack of coding. But he also emphasizes the need to strike a balance between technical and 'soft', business skills.

Jared and Nathaniel then discuss the question of what makes for a "well-rounded programmer," given the wide range of technology and language choices available today.  

According to Nathaniel, a good programmer dables in a range of languages but also specializes in one "core" language. He recommends dabbling in some functional programming with languages like Lisp, using Python and Ruby but also having a little grounding in C.