John: Blue Shield

John has built Ruby on Rails applications since 2008. While he appreciates Ruby’s elegant syntax as a discerning programmer, he’s most interested in its proficiency for solving business problems. Before co-founding The Agile League with Melinda and Micah, John worked with them at Vitrue, where he led the development of Publisher and learned to balance code maintainability with the demands of an explosive business.

John takes his work very personally, and it’s not uncommon for work to follow him home. He shares his professional interests by attending meetups, giving presentations, and teaching classes. He loves indie rock, scuba diving, and quality beer.

A Georgia native and an Emory alumnus, John resides in Athens, with his wife, Meredith, and his dog, Bunny.

Favorite beer: Southern Tier Unearthly IPA

Micah is really great at one thing: getting his hands dirty. Once he has a basic understanding of what needs to be done, he likes to start running toward the goal and figure out the rest as he goes. He loves experimenting with cutting edge technologies like MongoDB, Redis, and Node.js, but he only brings these powers to bear on assignments where they make sense. He’ll never skip a simple, straightforward solution just to be flashy.

Besides doing assignments for The Agile League, Micah runs asuccessful software-as-a-service business on the side, so he’s intimitately familiar with the trials and tribulations of the web business world. He knows that sometimes things need to just get done, regardless of what the “right” way is. In the end, pleasing the users is all that matters.

Finally, Micah is a fun guy to talk to and easy to work with. He knows that basic skills like politeness and communication are sorely lacking in the computer world and he does his best to fight the stereotype that all programmers are anti-social psychopaths. A good programmer should act more like a hero and less like a mad supervillain.

Favorite Superhero: Batman, in all his incarnations, even Batman Beyond and especially The Dark Knight Returns.

Melinda: Crimson Cape

Melinda has been a professional software developer for over 12 years, most recently specializing in full-stack Ruby on Rails development. Before donning the mantle of The Agile League, she was the Lead Developer for Vitrue Tabs, a large component of Vitrue’s extremely successful social media platform. She also has extensive past technical experience with Java and Oracle PL/SQL, with domain experience in the energy industry.

Melinda enjoys playing with new languages and technologies, which is what led her to Ruby on Rails in the first place. In her spare time, she plays violin and piano in a couple chamber ensembles.

Favorite Python: John Cleese