About version2beta

Hi, I'm Rob Martin. I use the handle version2beta almost everywhere online.

About me

I'm a coder who's always done his own devops, usually without a net. I see functional programming informing our program and system architecture again, and making concurrency and scale possible where imperative and object oriented code do not. I look at the best ways to manage complexity and again see declarative programming techniques. As a result I've spent the last couple of years focusing on functional programming, functional data stores, functional-first program design, and immutable servers.

I've started businesses, sold them, given them away, and lost them: graphic design and print brokering (1989), contract industrial and machine control systems (1998), open source programming and systems integration (2000), internet service provider and web hosting (2001), and ERP plus ecommerce implementation (2007). I am comfortable with business processes and the entire product development cycle, but I know which parts are best delegated: all of them.

Now I'm a manager who aims to do as little as possible, so that I'm prepared to take on more. I intend to become VP-Eng or CTO for a team with 20 to 100 members, and then make a difference in their lives and the lives of our customers.

I'm working on projects related to gender diversity on tech teams, building teams of functional programmers, using functional programming in a startup environment, building teams that productively include juniors, and mob programming. I coach and mentor women through Girl Develop It, RailsBridge, RailsGirls, PyLadies, and Women Who Code. I teach Elixir in a series of workshops I created starting with "An ounce of Elixir" and going up from there. My students and my teams mob program, and my teams include a women's internship program, possibly the only development-oriented program of its type in the western US.

I speak internationally and write here and occasionally on other sites as well.

About version2beta.com

The current site design is by up-and-coming web designer and developer Becky Hile of Radiant Punch. The site is statically built using Metalsmith.