About Me

Akshay Khot, Software Developer in Victoria, BC

Who Are You?

My name is Akshay, and I'm a software developer living in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. I grew up in India, but Canada has been my home for the past 10 years.

I love programming in Ruby and building web applications with Rails. This blog is my attempt to share my learnings and to spread the joy of programming in Ruby with the world. Every day, I try to learn something new in Ruby and Rails and write about it.

If you're not a programmer and don't know what or who Ruby is, it's a programming language from Japan that runs many of the web applications that you know and love. Think Shopify, GitHub, Basecamp, AirBnb, Twitch, Dribbble, SoundCloud, Intercom, etc...the list is endless. Rails is a framework that makes it very easy and enjoyable to build these web applications.

What Do You Do?

I own and run an independent software studio/agency based out of Victoria, BC, specializing in Ruby on Rails. In other words, you can hire me as a contractor to work on your Rails apps, either on a single project, or on an ongoing basis. Since launching in early 2024, I’ve successfully completed projects for multiple clients and continue to work with several on an ongoing retainer basis.

Building websites and web-applications with Ruby and Rails is something I really enjoy and love. For design-related work, I typically prefer Tailwind CSS, and for more complicated designs, I often work with trusted & talented CSS developers who can convert your Figma designs to beautifully crafted and handwritten Tailwind classes.

If you'd like to work with me, please send me an email. If you have a Rails app that you need to build/maintain/enhance, or build/migrate a website to Rails, get in touch. Most of my clients are in Canada and US, but in the past, I've worked with European and Australian companies as well.

I have more than nine years of professional experience as a full-stack web application developer, and have worked on all layers of the web stack, including the back-end, front-end, and database. For a long time, I was a .NET developer, programming C# on Windows. However, in early 2021, I started learning Ruby and Rails for one of my side projects.

After working on enterprise applications with C# and .NET for the past six years, programming with Ruby was a breath of fresh air. Within a week, I was in love with this beautiful programming language. After immersing myself in Ruby and Rails for a few months, I decided to switch from C#/.NET to Ruby and Rails.

As a software developer, my primary goal is to build useful software that solves problems, provides value to the users, and makes money for the owners, and I approach all my projects with the same mindset. I am very passionate about software development, always looking forward to learning new skills to become a better software developer.

Why Do You Blog?

This blog exists purely for selfish reasons. I find the field of software development endlessly fascinating and wanted to track everything I learned about building software over time.

I also found that the best way for me to learn a topic was to research how it works, write a blog post that teaches that topic in simple words, and then put it on the Internet to reference when needed in the future. If others find these posts helpful, relevant, or interesting, that's just the icing on the cake.

For a brief backstory of this blog and the name Write Software, Well, check out this post:

This blog is a labor of love. Programming and writing are two activities that really make me happy, and this blog lets me do them both. I started the blog in late 2021 (right after I started learning Rails), and now more than 30,000 Ruby and Rails programmers read it each month. The new developer friends and connections I've made all over the world is a fantastic reward in and of itself.

If you think I can add value to your team or organization, or just want to say hello, please drop me an email. I look forward to talking to you.

Thanks for stopping by.

Akshay

Testimonials

Over the course of my professional career, I've had the privilege of working closely with some of the best in the industry. The list includes startup founders and CEOs, veteran software architects, CTOs, programmers, and managers. Here's what they've had to say about my work and this blog.

May I say that of all of my time (since 2007!) doing Rails, I have never read a Rails blog that is so well written. I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly why the articles are so good but I haven’t found your secret sauce yet. I really enjoy reading them and have profited from the learnings from a few.

- Philip Poots, Chief Technology Officer, ClubCollect

Some of the highest quality stuff out there...

- Joe Masilotti, Founder, RailsDevs

I really like Akshay’s Rails posts, how he approaches topics, and how he presents them. Really nice work.

I've recommended Akshay’s blog to several people. Keep up the great work.

- Miles Woodroffe, Global CTO, Cookpad

I worked with Akshay for over 5 years, initially at Econics and was very pleased to be able to recruit him to CityView. He is always highly motivated, enthusiastic and a quick learner. He is not only constantly improving his software development skills but also takes a keen interest in understanding the domain of any problem.

We relied on him as the lead developer for several new, innovative, complex features – with great success. He has excellent communication skills whether it is with a technical team or clients and end users. He brings great value to any development team. I would definitely enjoy working with Akshay again.

- Steve Graham, Chief Technical Architect, CityView

Akshay is highly motivated and takes great interest in the Software Development process. He is constantly upgrading his knowledge and skills, and always strives to produce the best design.

He makes a great effort to understand the problem he is tasked to solve and any existing code base he needs to work with. I enjoyed working with him very much.

- Tom Hart, R&D Manager and Team Lead, CityView

During Akshay's time with us he brought significant value. Akshay was a hard worker who used innovative approaches to solving software development challenges. He was also cheerful and enthusiastic and a pleasure to work with.

- Sean Higgins, Executive Vice President, CityView

Akshay Khot is a very capable, creative and hard working software developer. He's technically adept but he also sees things from the end user perspective.

During his tenure with my company, CityView, his creativity and hard work resulted in some added game changing functionality in our software. He was also thorough, polite and amicable in conversations with clients and end users.

I highly recommend Akshay and would go as far to say that it would be a mistake not to hire him.

- Mark Atkinson, Director of R&D, CityView

Akshay was a great team member during his time at AE.

He was quickly able to get up to speed and contribute to the overall project by leading development on a Drupal module for our service. He has a good attention to detail and was able to move ahead at a good pace.

While working on the module he was also able to pitch in and help other team members by testing and identifying bugs for a new platform release.

He communicated and contributed well across our internal ticketing system, on Slack and during our team breakfasts.

I'm happy to recommend Akshay as a great addition to any development team.

- Jeff Mitchell, Co-founder and CTO, Appreciation Engine

I worked with Akshay at the Appreciation Engine between September 2017 and December 2017. We worked remotely: Akshay from Canada and me from New Zealand.

I found Akshay to be a great communicator - we had to communicate remotely on a daily basis to discuss work and programming questions. He was a very fast with excellent programming skills, He was able to pick up PHP quickly and was also quick to pick up the Drupal framework.

He was always keen to learn and asked great questions about the code, always making good suggestions and showing an excellent understanding of the coding principles. He was a great fit for our team.

It is a shame to see him go but I am certain he will be an excellent asset to all future endeavours.

- Mike Penhall, Senior Developer, Appreciation Engine