Rails class and windows users....

[Mark Locklear]

I know many of you are on the coders league email list, but I want to get some thoughts from just the Rails folks. If you are not on the coders league list, then see the email below about a proposed class I am hosting this summer.

What are ya'lls opinions on how I should handle the windows users? I am wondering if I should encourage them to use Linux (or MAC if they have access to one) rather than Windows? I know there is a rails installer for windows. Has anyone used it to do any real development? I know one of the stumbling blocks for this class will be getting a stable environment set-up. Package installers can  be a real impediment, and I want to minimize that issue as much of that as possible.

Any info appreciated...thanx!

........................

Hey folks! I am gaging interest in a 10 week class on Ruby on Rails this summer. The dates would be May 19 - July 21 in the evening from 5:30 - 8ish-pm. We would meet once a week (night of the week TBA). The structure of the class would use a curriculum developed by Richard Schneems who works for Github, and is an adjunct instructor at UT Austin. The course is located here...

http://schneems.com/ut-rails

Each week has a handful of videos that we could watch as a group, then work through the exercises in class, and at home. I want to stress this would not be a social gathering, but a class for people who are serious about learning Rails, or want to improve their rails programming.

This is not just for Rails neophytes, I could also use some Rails experts to help others who have little or no experience with the Framework. I am a Linux guy (Ubuntu) so I could use a MAC and Windows person to help those particular folks with their individual platform.

If you are interested, and willing to commit to the full 10 weeks, send me a message offline (no need to clog up the user group) and let me know your OS of choice (windows, mac, linux) and what night(s) of the week you are available.

I have a couple of AB Tech students who have expressed interest. I want at least 5 people before moving forward with any plans. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanx!

--
J. Mark Locklear
-Philippians 4:13 gives you the muscle, but YOU have to flex it!

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary persons. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary individual."
-- Elbert Hubbard

[Steven Jenkins]

Windows users should install virtualization software and use a VM that is running Linux.  Rails on Windows is just not worth the hassle.

Steven

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[Bruce Hauman]

You are right about the difficulties.  I participated in a Railsbridge class for women and they dedicate a whole session to installing.  And it was freaking Painful.  I mean really Painful.  So many gotchas.  If you had a virtualbox image ready for people to use on a thumbdrive I think you would save yourself some serious headaches.  Even for linux and osx users.  Then everyone is on the same page.  You can even have code in the directories, command shortcuts etc.

Here are the current instructions that they use at Railsbrigde:

http://installfest.railsbridge.org/installfest/installfest

I recently used Railsinstaller to get it on my brothers OSX machine.  It failed.  Really failed.

[Semmy Purewal]

I really applaud the fact that you're doing this, Mark! I think it's
an awesome idea and can have a major impact.

I agree with Bruce. I have a few additional tips to share.

You may want to decide on an audience. If 50% of your attendees have
never written a for-loop, and 50% people of your audience is using Git
on a daily basis, it will be very challenging to run a class that's
effective for everyone. Perhaps you can either market it to pure
beginners (i.e. no coding experience), or coders who have never done
web development, or experienced web developers who have never used
Rails.

I will say that among the first two groups (non-coders and coders who
have never done web development) the learning curve for Rails is
extremely steep. In my web-app development class, I decided against
using Rails despite the fact that all of the students are required to
have some experience programming. My feeling is that the mental model
for Rails is really hard for beginners to wrap their heads around,
particularly if they've also never really seen HTML, CSS, JavaScript
or worked in a client-server model, or done real OOP. So you might
gear it towards people who have done web development, but have never
used Rails.

I'm not familiar with Schneem's approach, so he may have solved some
of these issues. But I have seen someone try Hartl's approach in a
free community class, and it had a high attrition rate. I'd be *very*
interested in hearing more about the Railsbridge approach, Bruce, and
how it worked out for you.

These are just my thoughts, so people may disagree! I'm happy to offer
any other advice based on my experience if you're interested.

Cheers,

-Semmy

[Mark Locklear]

Awesome link Bruce..thanks for sending me that. I will pour over it and see what I can use for the class.

@Semmy...everyone in the class will (should) have some programming experience. Schneeman's only recommendation was simply variable assignment, if/else, and loops.

 I'm thinking that is all we will do the first class is get environments set up. I am also going to go ahead and email participants and ask that they being working on setting their environment up prior to class. I agree this will be an interesting experiment. I will keep you updated!

[Steven Jenkins]

Very good points.  I'd like to offer some people as resources who have done some Rails training & mentoring:

- Scott (who used to be our Rails team lead but is now at a DC startup) has a lot of experience mentoring people with Rails.

- Nate & Chris recently ran a 'Rails Rookies' day with 30-some attendees and can share their experiences doing that.  Also, I believe Nate has a VM available that you might be able to use as a starting point to help save time in that first class doing setup.

Email addresses just need the name with '@synaptian.com'..

Thanks,
Steven

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Semmy Purewal <semmyp...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mark Locklear]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. Sounds like y'all confirmed my suspicions about Windows. Good call on using VM's for those windows folks (or dual boot Ubuntu). I am wondering if Vagrant might be useful for configuring environments? Any used it?

[Semmy Purewal]

I use Vagrant in my web development course -- I have a project that
sets up Node, Mongo and Redis [1]. I built it back when you had to
compile Node from source, but I still use it for a few pedagogical
reasons: (1) the virtual server forces the students to start thinking
in terms of clients and servers, (2) the dev environment is the same
whether they are using Windows, Mac or Linux, and (3) in a few minutes
they are ready to go!

I haven't used it for Rails -- in the past I've just stuck with RVM on
my personal dev machine. But like I said, I've never taught Rails. I
would definitely consider it if I were in your shoes.

-Semmy

[1] https://github.com/semmypurewal/node-dev-bootstrap