Study Group for online Rails based SaaS course

[Colin Dabritz]

The ruby newbies meeting tonight was great, and among other things the EdX course by Berkeley covering SaaS in Ruby on Rails came highly recommended, so we're starting a study group!

The course is online and started March 15th, but hop on this NOW and you can catch up, you haven't missed any deadlines yet.

https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS169.1x/2013_March/about

A study group is a great way to block out some time durring the week (they estimate 12 hours a week effort) and we'll all help each other with the course and any side issues that come up. Note the course does expect some existing language familiarity, they will be covering core Ruby very briefly, although our study group can help with any gaps you have. Chuck explicitly recommended this course for those considering Portland Code School, it provides a solid foundation to build on and something to do until the session starts!

Scheduling:

For starters I was planning on:

Tuesday - Breakout session durring the 7-9 pm regular Ruby meetups at CloudCompass (at PDX http://calagator.org/events/search?tag=pdxruby)

Thursday - Evening Study Session 7-9 pm at PDX Hackathon (Lucky Lab) (at PDX Hackathon http://calagator.org/events/1250463495 )

Saturday - Afternoon Study Session - 2 pm+ (at.. library? my place? TBD Thursday)

It's ok if you can't make some of these, do what you can

If I have bandwidth available we may be able to livestream or video conference the sessions. We could also have virtual sessions. I also expect to hang out in IRC durring these.

Logistics are always fun and are subject to change.

Other resources - Mailing list (if this is low volume, I was going to stick to pdxruby-beginners, if it gets noisy we can break it out), IRC, other Ruby events, other thoughts?

Lets make this happen!

Your homework:

-Sign up for the course https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS169.1x/2013_March/about

-Get caught up for Thursday, bring any Qs!

-(Optional)Get the books (see course)

-Pipe up in PdxRuby-Beginners list if you are interested, add any thoughts or questions

-Show up to the events if you can and keep up with the list for changes

Next meeting is 3/21 - THIS Thursday evening at the Lucky Lab at 7:00 pm (as part of http://calagator.org/events/1250463495). I'll make a sign and hang out in IRC or something.

Hope to see you there,

-Colin Dabritz

[Chris Hough]

I just signed up for it Colin, seems like another great resource to further my knowledge in Ruby and Rails.  While I may not be able to make the Thursday SE events, I will be at the Ruby meetups on Tuesdays and was going to carve out a chunk of time on Sundays to watch the material each week.  Did you buy the book?

[Lucas Charles]

I also signed up. I am trying to finish up a Coursera course this week (final due in 10 days) so I might get a late start before I can actual dedicate much time to the class. Available varies quite a bit for me but I'll definitely try and make it out to some of the meetups. I took will be around on IRC, etc for any conferencing.

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

Alright, sounds good. Do what you can is the name of the game. I'm dovetailing the hackathon for a supportive environment, even if I'm the only one there this week. Is Saturday good for you guys? If it's just a handful of people I can host Saturday at my house (Inner SE).

Anyway, I'll be at the Lucky Lab tonight at 7. See you there if you can make it.

[Dustin Zeisler]

Saturday would be a good day for me since I can't make it Thursday evenings.

[Colin Dabritz]

Ok, I've booked the small study room at the Central Library downtown from 2-4 tomorrow.

It's room 2b at the back of the Science and Business section, and holds up to 10 people.

I'll be there at 2, and we can go over the content so far. I have the book if people are interested.

I'll send email to the folks who were interested on Tuesday as well. See you all there.

-Colin

[Chris Hough]

I will be stopping by, although I have quite a bit of catching up to do on it.  

Chris Hough

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[Colin Dabritz]

ok, looks like people are already busy Thursday, that's ok. It's off the list. Saturday might work next week, we'll see.

The next meeting will be a breakout session at the Tuesday night Ruby Hack and Help. Hope to see you there!

-Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

We had a decent session tonight, especially getting the VM environment up for some people, we checked out the book which seems decently helpful and more in depth.

Tuesdays and Saturdays work best for people it looks like, although this weekend is BeaverBarCamp, and we're planning to find some space for a session there.

All the info is here:

http://barcampportland.org/

RSVP button (links to Eventbrite) is on the upper right if you are planning to go for the whole thing.

It's downtown near the library and PSU.

We'll do a breakout session durring barcamp, whatever session best matches 2-3 perhaps, I'll post more info here on the day of the event, and try to hang out in the IRC channel.

Don't worry if you didn't sign up for BarCamp, they are generally pretty open, and we're doing an informal group in the main area. Worst case we can meet downtown somewhere instead.

Also note, first homework should be up tomorrow, and taking a good shot at it before the session is recommended.

I will be gone next Tuesday because it's also PADNug night.

Hope to see you there, post if you have questions.

-Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

I've been poking at the homework today, the exercises look good. I did want to mention one Snafu I found an answer for: Shared Folders

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/05/access-virtualbox-shared-folder-from-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin-guest-machine/

This guide worked for me (on mac, it's just a different host folder location).

The problem is that the user account (saasbook) is NOT a member of the vboxsf group, and the group has permissions to access the folder.

The key is this line, adding the user to the group:

sudo adduser saasbook vboxsf

The files are mounted automatically under /media/sf_VM_Shared_Files

This means you can use a nice editor of choice on the host side (on Mac I'm using Sublime, for example) and run your homework in the VM. Note you can do this all in your Mac side ruby environment, but I figured the skills would be handy later when were running rails and such in the VM.

-Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

Ok, I'm at BarCamp, and it looks good.

http://barcampportland.org/

First Unitarian Church’s Eliot Center, 1226 SW Salmon St. Map: http://g.co/maps/9ktxk

The schedule has lunch as 1-2:30p, then a 2:30-3:30 session.

Lets meet durring lunch in the main room (with the board) around 1:30 or so, and we can go into the 2:30-3:30 session if we want to. The homework has been interesting so far, I've made it through all but the last 2, and partway into those, but I do have questions.

Here's an interesting tidbit I did not know. print and puts are different in more than just line ending. Print will "pretty print" arrays, where puts will place them on separate lines:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5018633/what-is-the-difference-between-print-and-puts

Helpful for testing!

[Colin Dabritz]

We made a bit of progress at BarCamp, don't hold off too long!

We'll get together at some point at Tuesdays meeting:

http://calagator.org/events/1250463640

but the talks look interesting to me, especially the bit about learning.

Also, FYI, the AutoGrader for the homework is timing out for me with:

"On Time AutograderSubprocess error: Program timed out"

even on an older assignment that was fine before, so something is up. Hopefully it gets fixed soon, I think I have the final program done, but not fully understood yet.

As an alternative, I'd be happy to discuss my solutions so far to compare.

-Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

Everything below still stands, but I forgot that the PADNug meeting was Tuesday, so I won't be there. You can still circle the wagons and support each other though.

If anyone is at the hacking cognition talk, take notes for me. :)

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

How's the homework going all? It's due Sunday, and the new rails based one is already up.

If you're stuck, post questions and we can jump in and help (I've made it through the homework).

Next meeting is Saturday at the Central Library room 2b (far back left corner of the Science and Commerce section, 2nd floor) from 2-4. It'll be a nice quiet place to get some homework done, discuss the course, and have fun.

Hope to see you there!

-Colin

[AT]

Having a hard time getting VM set up. It keeps wanting to boot from a disk. 

Also, Regex-s are completely new to me, so I spent a long time the last few days just figuring out how those work.

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Lucas Charles]

Currently working on Part 3.  I just started yesterday, so yet again I'm just catching up. Fairly straightforward but i'm getting some ugly code.  Lots of annoyances, but relatively minor (i dont know what i'm doing in this language) issues.  Hope I manage to get enough time for it before the 7th.

[Colin Dabritz]

Yeah, coming from a software engineering background, I found that solving the problems wasn't too bad, I knew what I wanted, but had trouble figuring out how to express it in ruby, especially doing so cleanly/idiomatically. This was somewhat opposite of what some of the others experienced being new to programming, which makes sense. I have a feeling we'll be doing a lot of last minute HW1, and less HW2.

I did manage to get solutions that felt reasonably clean and I think idiomatic, I'd be happy to go over it tomorrow.

Thanks,

-Colin

[Jordan S]

thanks for your help last week at barcamp Colin! I will see you tomorrow at the library.

[Ron Lunde]

Did everyone else get the first homework done? I just finished. I haven't managed to make it to any events so far (combination of a sprained ankle and stupidly signing up for 4 classes + my job), but I'm enjoying this class. I thought they did a really good job of picking out interesting homework problems. Thanks for organizing things, Colin - hopefully I'll make it to a study group one of these days!

--Ron Lunde

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[Chris Hough]

I am working on it now.  About the meetings....same here! Been crazy busy, although I do plan on being there Tuesday.  

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. 

Chris 

[Colin Dabritz]

Ok, we got a bit done Tuesday, and we'll be meeting this Saturday from 2:00-4:00pm at the Central Library, Rm 2b (2nd floor, science/commerce section, WAY at the back corner).

I'd recommend working on the homework in advance if you are trying to make this weeks deadline, the assignments got more complex, and you may need time to iterate a bit.

We'll also meet next Tuesday at Crowd Compass as usual (Beginner night this week I think).

-Colin

[Colin Dabritz]

I'll be at the Central Library tomorrow, room 2b, from 2-4 pm. I hope to see you there.

-Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

[Colin Dabritz]

We're done. I'm NOT going to be at the library further unless someone wants to arrange it specifically. We had a good run, it was some fun stuff. I'm going to be at the Tuesday events regularly, and of course I'm still happy to discuss course content. It was a kick diving into rails with you all, hope to see you around.

Thanks,

Colin

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:30:04 PM UTC-7, Colin Dabritz wrote:

The ruby newbies meeting tonight was great, and among other things the EdX course by Berkeley covering SaaS in Ruby on Rails came highly recommended, so we're starting a study group!

The course is online and started March 15th, but hop on this NOW and you can catch up, you haven't missed any deadlines yet.

https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS169.1x/2013_March/about

 I