Ian if you're honest about the 6 months works and 80 hours a week you are really underselling yourself. Your situation reminds me a lot about when I first started out. I worked on personal startups for 6 months with insane hours, and after 3 months I started applying nonstop for opportunities to grow as a developer.

I can say that 1 month of mentorship at my job was equivalent to those 6 months, so I'd recommend you start applying for Junior Developer positions to further grow as a developer. I took a brief look at your github page and I think the next area you should work on is rspec and testing as I see a lot of empty spec/ directories.

I see a lot of people saying to pair remotely and I'm going to go against the grain and say that I think that would be a poor decision for a newbie looking for mentorship. At my current job, we don't really do pairing so I can't help you out but there are plenty paid pair programming opportunities in the Bay to choose from (Pivotal Labs and their clients are a good place to start).

Dude, just go build stuff. It's cheap! If you were able to spare the 6 months of 80 hour weeks to learn Ruby, Rails and JS then you have the spare to start building things on free or very cheap hosting.

And you probably overshot a bit. I'm sure most of the interesting bootstrapped tech businesses out there were probably started by people who could barely code. Don't focus too much on the tools, focus on the end results.

As for pairing, what is it that you are really looking for? Are you looking for a job? Just looking to be a great programmer first and then figure something out later?

Don't pair for free. Get paid. If it's a job, then you should be fully on the team as an equal to everyone else. Otherwise you are probably just dead weight.

Better yet, build something! FFS, what I wouldn't give for 6 months just to block out to build something. I haven't been able to do something like that since high school. That's why I roll my eyeballs when somebody posts on there that they are 14 and they built X app. If I had the spare time that I did when I was that age and access to the stuff people have today, I would be flying on a rocket to Mars by now. ;)

Edit: Okay, building rocket ships isn't cheap.

If you and a prospective partner are interested in doing this remotely, try using Screenhero. Many users have found it's the best way to code together remotely.

Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of Screenhero :)

Check out AirPair - they just graduated from the latest YC class.

Want to be taken seriously as a developer? Get a job doing it. First of the month is just around the corner, and you have plenty of time to spruce up the README files on your github page to prepare. :)

Join me remotely ?

how about remote work?

Perhaps you missed the part where he was talking about apprenticing?

Is't too rude for you to say that?

Yes, OP is rude but he is also trying to teach the youngster a lesson, that Rails and JS is nothing. Don't believe the hype or the cult of PG.

Don't underestimate the power of simple JS and Rails

It will find you work and happiness, but you will never impress a grizzly C++ programer like me.

My bank balance and mental well being doesn't care.

What ?