Right now I'm a bit worried about leaving my current job (10 months in) because I have the opportunity to go backpacking through South America with a friend, which I honestly believe is not something that comes up very often.

Anyways I was just wondering how a manager might react to my situation once I come back and start looking for a job again. Could it impact my professional profile in a negative way?

Because here is what leaving a job to go backpacking tells me: You are willing to take risks when the opportunities present themselves. The unknown (will I find a job later) doesn't scare you. You value learning about other places/cultures, which will give you perspectives other people might not get (let's be real, 2 weeks in a resort hotel on vacation does not teach you about another country's culture).

If you can honestly translate your backpacking experience into qualities that a company would look for, you'll have no problem. In fact, you should probably explain that in your cover letter to potential employers anyway.

That's certainly a valid way to look at it, but another employer might look at it as, "I don't want to hire this guy and then 3-6 months from now he decides he wants to chase butterflies in Mexico and is going to leave me high and dry mid-project."

It goes both ways. Now I wouldn't personally look at it that way, but I can see where someone might.

Well honestly I am a bit scared about the job situation when I come back but I do think that I have more to gain by going on a backpacking experience at this time of my life than staying another 6 months / 1 year at my current job as a developer..

Web dev moves really fast though! hopefully it won't be crazy different when I get back.

On the other hand, personal opportunities like this don't come along very often. I've known a few friends and family do something big like this in their 20s, and without exception they have had amazing experiences and no serious regrets in the long term, even if settling back in when they first came home wasn't entirely easy.

Only you can weigh up the pros and cons in your personal situation, but as long as you're being financially sensible and you're not damaging your current employer unreasonably by leaving so soon, I think it is extremely unlikely that you'll do any serious or permanent damage to your career if you decide to go.

By the way, web dev doesn't really move very fast. If you stick with it as a career then some time over the next 10-20 years you'll come to realise that the fundamentals actually evolve very slowly. The illusion of rapid change is mostly perpetuated by blogs and online forums and conferences that always want the next big thing to talk about, but they're mostly just talking about superficial things like which tool or framework to use. If you decide to go then nothing that really matters in web dev is going to have shifted so far in a few months that you can't catch up very quickly when you get back.

Also, if a future company didn't understand why you went on this trip, it's likely that they wouldn't fit well with your personality at some other point anyway. So you might be better off not getting sucked into that kind of place anyway.

So go on the trip and mostly worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Just make sure you have enough money saved that when you get back you'll be able to afford the 1-3 months a job search and potential relocation can take/cost.

I strongly agree with this. We're talking about hiring human beings, not machines, and someone with the character traits that would make you go adventuring for an extended period probably has a lot to offer, other things being equal. The challenge is demonstrating that other things have not suffered as a result of that choice.

For example, a good reference from the last employer confirming that everything was professionally handed over before leaving might go a long way to mitigating concerns about only working there for a few months. I'm not generally a big believer in relying on references when hiring, but in a case like this, that sort of specific detail could be an important asset. Given the relatively short professional career so far, I would also be tempted to work a brief mention of this point into the covering letter or, if it's a resume-only application next time, into the resume itself.

b) if I interviewed you and you explained the backpacking thing I would wonder and ask why you didn't take a leave of absence or some such, but I wouldn't hold it against you.

if they cant manage that, that is a great red flag when you need to explain your quit.

The good news is that Rails is now mature, so the upgrade path tends to be easier than it was in the early days.

So I am actually finishing the development of a similar system for a group of anesthesiologists that needed a custom app to keep track of their patients and their pain medication.

Had I known of this project before I would have actually considered contributing/forking it to handle their use cases. See this hits pretty close home since I'm Colombian and hospitals here have terribly outdated systems.

I love the idea of the app working offline and syncing when internet is available since mobile networks here aren't verye reliable. One problem is,as others have mentioned, having it work on mobile is very important. I don't think it really is because of lack of PCs and desktops it's just that doctors are always running all over the place and it's more convienent for them to log the information on a smartphone/tablet.

Anyways my next project is also on the medical field and will have a wider scope so I'll keep an eye on this project for when the time comes, I'd love to contribute eventually.

I fired them because I'm a mature professional who can figure out how best to utilize my time, TYVM.

Find a company that people actually enjoy coming to work and collaborating in. I mean, if you're an engineer, you're already doing the #1 job in the country, why poison the well at a company with a mistrustful IT policy?

Sorry but I have no end of disrespect for that kind of bullshit. If you're at a job and you're jerking around, people will eventually figure it out regardless of stupid content filtering. And in this case, this is a lost learning experience for you, as the article is very interesting.

I can say I have a positive experience with semantic since I'm only using that now. But I'm very lost and it feels like it could take a long time to learn. Although you can start using it the same as you use bootstrap, include the css and js as CDN and here you go.