My Rails Learning Experience- What are your thoughts on help options?

[Sean Kelley]

I am new to Rails.  I have done the Rails Tutorial by Hartl I have done the Ruby tutorial at Code Academy , completed the the Engineering Berkeley Software as Service course, done a Coursera course,  and read a few basic books (Ruby on Rails 4 Guide).

First of all, the tutorial by Hartl is excellent.  Really helped me get an overview.  It's where I should have started my quest, but I started with the Coursera course which was really a copy-paste exercise.  I then did the EdX (Berkeley) course which was pretty hard but the Ruby part was good.  I did not do any pairing in the course and had lots of trouble toward the end getting the RSpec testing concepts.  I got the certificate but did not feel confident to go on to part 2.  I then did the Hartl tutorial which clarified a lot.  The ruby course at Code Academy was very good too (prerequisite for EdX course)

I am stuck on my first app. I find myself re-reading general documentation for answers which is getting old.  I picked up the Rails 4 Way book but that looked a bit advanced.  I have read so general stuff much that I am forgetting basics ;-) - like how to use Ruby.

I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded, and do not have a budget for support or training.  I posted a question to stack overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet.  I have heard of airpair but could run up a bill pretty fast with $60-90+ per hour.  

Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit a snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities?  I used elance for a php project once.  Result took much longer than promised and had lots of mistakes before it was right.  I have again begun to wonder about using contractors from on one of these elance type sites. What have you tried when hitting a roadblock or have bigger vision than current skills?

[Jason Fleetwood-Boldt]

My friend Darrell Silver runs this company, their approach is that you pay them by the month a flat fee, and in exchange you get 1-on-1 tutoring and mentoring by an expert.

Personally, especially when learning languages (Ruby, Javascript, etc) I find Google to be very bad at helping me learn a new language and am a big fan of O'reilly books. I learned Ruby reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177

(On the other hand, there are a lot of good Rails resources available online.)

(However, I noticed that the book has not been updated for Ruby 2.0, which is unfortunate because it is an excellent resource)

I strongly recommend you focus on the fundamentals of Ruby before trying to get too deep into Rails. Some people try to learn both together, and while this is possible you often find yourself getting stuck on the syntax of Ruby and that can slow down your learning of Rails.

On Aug 15, 2014, at 4:12 PM, Sean Kelley <kelle...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am new to Rails.  I have done the Rails Tutorial by Hartl I have done the Ruby tutorial at Code Academy , completed the theEngineering Berkeley Software as Service course, done a Coursera course,  and read a few basic books (Ruby on Rails 4 Guide).

[Jason Fleetwood-Boldt]

On Aug 15, 2014, at 4:26 PM, Jason Fleetwood-Boldt <te...@datatravels.com> wrote:

My friend Darrell Silver runs this company, their approach is that you pay them by the month a flat fee, and in exchange you get 1-on-1 tutoring and mentoring by an expert.

I'm so sorry I meant to paste in this URL:

http://www.thinkful.com/

[Milan Dobrota]

You can either find somebody to work with you for cheaper, or invest
more time in trying to figure things out.

I do 1-on-1 tutoring as well, but my fees are a bit higher than what you
mentioned.

Milan

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[Hassan Schroeder]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Sean Kelley <kelle...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded, and
> do not have a budget for support or training. I posted a question to stack
> overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet.

And yet you didn't post that question here, or provide a link to it in
this message? Does that not seem a way to "get specific help"?

> Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit a
> snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities?

Are there meetup groups or hackathons being held nearby? If not,
maybe you could start one/some and meet potential collaborators.

But personally, I'd start posting questions here :-)

HTH, and good luck,
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.s...@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

[Bala Paranj]

I am stuck on my first app. I find myself re-reading general documentation for answers which is getting old.  I picked up the Rails 4 Way book but that looked a bit advanced.  I have read so general stuff much that I am forgetting basics ;-) - like how to use Ruby.

 

Ruby in a Nutshell is a good reference. Refer that book and experiment in the irb .

I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded, and do not have a budget for support or training.  I posted a question to stack overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet.  I have heard of airpair but could run up a bill pretty fast with $60-90+ per hour.  

 

You need to learn how to solve programming problems. Here is the steps to follow:

1. Write down your question.
       This makes you think and clarify your thoughts.
2. Design an experiment to answer that question.
       Keep the variables to a minimum so that you can solve the problem easily. You can then experiment in the irb, rails console or create a test case to reproduce the problem.
3. Run the experiment to learn.

If you are still not able to solve the problem, you post what you have done and what results you are getting to get help on this mailing list.
 

Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit a snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities?  I used elance for a php project once.  Result took much longer than promised and had lots of mistakes before it was right.  I have again begun to wonder about using contractors from on one of these elance type sites. What have you tried when hitting a roadblock or have bigger vision than current skills?

It's all about breaking down big problems into smaller problems that you can solve individually. I personally would never pay anyone for mentoring. Having a mentor also helps.

Good luck,
Bala Paranj
www.rubyplus.com