New To Community and ROR

[bryanguillen12]

Hey ROR Community, 

I am brand new to this fun world world of programming and obviously, ruby on rails too.  I have been picking up some basic skills in programming, enough to write a !SIMPLE! program, and also some front end web development. With that said, I am hitting walls all over the place; I know the talent and skill in this community can help me and maybe, through this thread, others that are also brand new and don't know where to begin, which is where we all begin.   

With that said, I am following a program for learning the fundamentals of ruby on rails development.  The program claims to give you the tool set to throw up a web app prototype, which is my end game.  The program teaches "ruby basics", "Javascript basics", "console foundations", "git basics", "Installing a Ruby development Environment", "Build a Todo List with Rails 4", "Database Foundations", "Active Record Basics", and finally "User Authentication with Rails". Will learning these specific topics, in that exact order, help?  After these courses, will I know enough to do a very simple software prototype?  Should I, or others in my position, go through all those steps or skip a few which aren't a priority for a prototype?  I appreciate the time and effort into any credible answer.  

Thank You ROR Community, 

Bryan G.       

[Walter Lee Davis]

There are a lot of different beginner intros to Rails. The one that is widely touted here as being the best is http://railstutorial.org. It's available for pay or for free to use on line. The book is great, the exercise applications are designed to work you through the basics of Rails, and give you a strong foundation with Test-Driven Development. One of the things I like about this is that it does not assume you understand very much, but never talks down to you (I did this after over 15 years of development, kept an open mind, and learned some things I thought I understood).

It sounds from the topics as if the course you are interested in is giving you a similar round-the-framework cruise of Rails. If you like it, go for it. You probably don't have anything to lose except a week of free time, and much to gain.

If you get stuck, do write back. Just remember to follow these steps to get a better answer:

1. Briefly describe what you're doing, show what you've done to debug and what you've searched for. Showing effort before asking the list is the first and most important thing.
2. Copy and paste your errors. No screenshots, and no vague descriptions like "I got an error". When you are developing in Rails and running your application, you have a terminal window open, and that terminal is tailing the log after you type rails s and return. Watch that window (and scroll back) for valuable info about what is happening.
3. Try to only ask one question at a time. The more focused your question, the better the answers you will get. The people on this list are busy with their own work, and still make time to help you with yours.

Cheers!

Walter

>
> Thank You ROR Community,
> Bryan G.
>

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[Tamara Temple]

There is no shortcut or fast track to learning how to build a web
application in Rails. All those topics listed above are necessary to
application development. Sure, you can follow some tutorials that allow
you to put up an application in a handful of hours [1, 2]. But all those things
are necessary to learning how to develop an application. Hartl's Rails
tutorial [3] is oft-cited and remains up-to-date.

This isn't a matter of "I had to do it, you have to as well"
either. There are countless numbers of people asking questions here, on
IRC, in meetups, and other places that would be answered if they had
gone through these beginning steps to understand what they are doing.

If you are hitting walls all over the place, that doesn't mean it's time
to start skipping steps. Instead it means you need to dig in deeper to
what you're not getting, and work harder at it so you do understand
it. Software development is a craft, skills don't acrue without work.

Going through the above sections isn't even enough to become a skillful
Rails application developer; they are just a foundation. Read this blog
article [4] to understand the scope of undertaking learning Rails.

So I would caution you to stop thinking about "what can I skip" and
start thinking about a strategy for accumulating the skills.

Being here is a good thing; it is a place to get answers. It's not
sufficient, though, really. Finding and joining a user group, meetup,
and so on is extremely helpful.

Again, don't look for shortcuts. Look for understanding.


[1] http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
[2] http://installfest.railsbridge.org/intro-to-rails/
[3] https://www.railstutorial.org/book
[4] https://www.codefellows.org/blog/this-is-why-learning-rails-is-hard





--
Tamara Temple
tam...@gmail.com
http://www.tamouse.org