I am a full-stack ROR developer who believes the best way to learn is by building and breaking things on my own.
Most of my work lives here on GitHub. I never cared much about certificates or badges because I care more about whether something runs in the real world and whether it makes sense when you read it.
When I started learning to code, everyone told me to pick the popular stack. People said choose the fastest language, the one with the biggest job market, or the one with the most hype. I ignored all of that and chose Ruby.
Ruby is not the trending one. It is not the fastest one. It is not the “robust” one if you only read buzzwords. I picked it because Ruby makes programming feel like writing a story to me. It does not let me feel lost in technical mess. It lets me build ideas in a way that stays clear when I read it tomorrow.
If you read this and assume I only know Ruby or that I cannot work in other languages, that would be a mistake. I believe in learning the principles and patterns that transfer to anything and everything I pick up.
Rails is still the one true one-person framework for me. It lets me turn an idea into a working product, end to end, without needing ten tools fighting each other. One day I want my own SaaS built top to bottom in Ruby and Rails, shaped exactly how I think.
I use my projects to see what I can build solo. They are small, sometimes rough, but they run live and they teach me more than any certificate could.
🔹 interesting.onrender.com
Ruby on Rails, Groq AI, Docker, Postgresql
A small universe for personalized content. Users pick 4–7 interest tags, then the system uses Llama 3.1 and prompt engineering to create followable AI bot personas for each tag. Bots are scheduled with ActiveJob and post automatically to timelines in real time.
The frontend is built with Hotwire (Turbo and Stimulus) so it works as a SPA. Runs on 512 MB RAM and handles 20–30 bots with rate limiting and daily bot creation.
🔹 quickmate.vercel.app
Ruby on Rails, React, Web Socket, Stockfish AI
Quickmate was my way of testing an idea: can I build a chess game that starts in the fewest clicks possible?
It uses a non-monolithic Rails API with a React/Vite/Material UI frontend. Players connect and match live through Action Cable and Redis.
There is a custom Ruby chess engine for move validation and sync, plus a low-memory Fairy Stockfish AI for bot opponents.
A centralized Game Manager (DRb) keeps multiple games in sync across workers and lets anyone start playing almost instantly.
🔹 echo-it.onrender.com
Ruby on Rails, Solidus, Docker, Postgresql
An e-commerce starter I used to learn Solidus end to end. Integrated Solidus starter frontend and admin UI, configured the sample product catalog and inventory. This one was about mastering Solidus conventions and seeing how it fits inside Rails for real deployment.
I want to keep building solo. One day I want my own SaaS, written fully in Ruby and Rails. I like knowing that if it ever works, it worked because one person wrote the whole story from start to finish and never got lost in noise.
Everything I do sits here on GitHub.
If you want to build or talk: dev.emareaitch@gmail.com