A little over a year ago, I was a (basically) content Microsoft developer, as I’d been for the past 10 years. I had my MCSD in hand, and had a well-paying, stable .NET development job.

As of today, I am a full-time Rails developer. That’s right – I’ve left my day job to do Rails consulting, while at the same time building a web-based product business. Not to mention that I’m now also doing all my work on a Mac.

How did this happen? It’s true, I made a good living working with Microsoft technologies, but I never quite found what I was looking for in the sense of day-to-day professional happiness. Then, DHH and the core team did their thing, I managed to bang out a couple of side projects because of it, and here we are. Yes, it’s a different flavor of kool-aid, but it just tastes so much better to me.

And, talk about good timing… Jeff and I just happen to be rockin’ the Ruby on Rails podcast today! Big thanks to Geoff Grossenbach for the great conversation we had just before RailsConf. We talk about a whole bunch of interesting stuff like developing (and deploying) Rails on Windows, why Microsoft should be scared of open-source technologies like Rails, Rails IDEs for Windows, and DHH’s hair. So check it out!