New Zombie : Looking for Ruby on Rails Mentor, Community and Advice

[Gabriel Lim]

Hello all,

My name is Gabriel, and I am new to the tech/hacker scene in
Singapore. I am looking for a group of like-minded Ruby on Rails
hackers and mentors to enlighten me along the path of learning Ruby on
Rails. So I thought I would introduce myself to this community, and
find out where you guys normally hang out, and if it's cool for me to
pop by and say hello.

Abit about my programming background (it's pathetic really). I picked
up programming around 3 months ago, prior to that, I have never wrote
a single line of code in my life. I started with PHP, having picked up
some books about PHP and MYSQL, and I was led through an abyss of poor
instruction online on my own.

This was until I found Ruby on Rails a month ago, and I finished
reading Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, Programming Ruby (The Pickaxe
Book) by Pragmatic Programmers and Agile Rails Web Development (4th
Ed), and wrote a few applications... now I've burned all my PHP books
and I'm officially a convert.

I was wondering if anyone has any advice on where to go next to
further my learning of Rails/Ruby and programming in general.. and any
open source projects you guys are working on now that I could
participate in.

Thanks,
Gabriel

[Andy Marks]

Hi Gabriel - welcome to the RoR world,

You mention a couple of objectives in your message before; "Rails/Ruby and programming in general".  Can I ask a couple of questions around this:

(a) Why do you want to learn programming?  Is this to get a job as a developer, or just as a hobbie?  Something else?

(b) Which is more important; RoR or programming in general?  Would you rather be known as the world's greatest RoR hacker or just someone who can happily write programs in almost any language

(c) Do you have a timeframe around your learning?  6 months?  12 months?  Whenever?

I think the answers to (a) and (b) will have a considerable impact on what direction you want to take your learning in. Software dev is a big, BIG world and there are lots of paths you can take.

Cheers,
Andy

Andy Marks

Technical Principal

ThoughtWorks Singapore

email: ama...@thoughtworks.bom

mobile: +65 9788 0259

web: www.thoughtworks.com

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[Adrian Cumiskey]

Hi Gabriel,

Don't burn your books, I still have a ZX80 assembler games programming book kicking around somewhere.... (yes I am that old ;-).  You'll find when you have been programming a little bit longer that what is important is the ideas and concepts that you choose to employ rather than your the language choice.

I too have been sharpening my Ruby skills recently and would recommend that you take a look at
The Ruby Language ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0596516177) and
Eloquent Ruby ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321584104) , I have found both books to be an excellent read.  I would be interested to hear about other books that people recommend.

I would also suggest that you take a look around on github, there are a million and one projects hosted there and a massive Ruby community.  Have a look around for a nice small project to contribute to, perhaps try fixing some defects to learn your way around the code and educate yourself at the same time.  You can learn an awful lot just by reading other peoples code, and picking up the good habits :-).

Best wishes with your studies and have fun! :-)

Adrian.

[Gabriel Lim]

Ah I accidentally 'replied to author' instead of public. :s

On Feb 7, 9:00 am, Andy Marks <ama...@thoughtworks.com> wrote:
> Hi Gabriel - welcome to the RoR world,
>
> You mention a couple of objectives in your message before; "Rails/Ruby and
> programming in general".  Can I ask a couple of questions around this:
>
> (a) Why do you want to learn programming?  Is this to get a job as a
> developer, or just as a hobbie?  Something else?
> (b) Which is more important; RoR or programming in general?  Would you
> rather be known as the world's greatest RoR hacker or just someone who can
> happily write programs in almost any language
> (c) Do you have a timeframe around your learning?  6 months?  12 months?
>  Whenever?
>
> I think the answers to (a) and (b) will have a considerable impact on what
> direction you want to take your learning in. Software dev is a big, BIG
> world and there are lots of paths you can take.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>

> *Andy Marks*
> *Technical Principal*
> ThoughtWorks Singapore
> *email*: ama...@thoughtworks.bom
> *mobile*: +65 9788 0259
> *web*:www.thoughtworks.com

[Gabriel Lim]

Hi Adrian!

Thank you for your advice. Sure thing, I will start poking around
Github and look at the projects there. Can you share more with us
about your background and how long have you been programming already?
Was it hard to pick up? :S

Hope to catch you guys soon at the next SRB meeting!

Regards,
Gabriel

On Feb 7, 1:34 pm, Adrian Cumiskey <adr...@agileowl.com> wrote:
> Hi Gabriel,
>
> Don't burn your books, I still have a ZX80 assembler games programming book
> kicking around somewhere.... (yes I am that old ;-).  You'll find when you
> have been programming a little bit longer that what is important is the
> ideas and concepts that you choose to employ rather than your the language
> choice.
>
> I too have been sharpening my Ruby skills recently and would recommend that
> you take a look at
> The Ruby Language (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0596516177) and

> Eloquent Ruby (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321584104) , I have found

> both books to be an excellent read.  I would be interested to hear about
> other books that people recommend.
>
> I would also suggest that you take a look around on github, there are a
> million and one projects hosted there and a massive Ruby community.  Have a
> look around for a nice small project to contribute to, perhaps try fixing
> some defects to learn your way around the code and educate yourself at the
> same time.  You can learn an awful lot just by reading other peoples code,
> and picking up the good habits :-).
>
> Best wishes with your studies and have fun! :-)
>
> Adrian.

> On Feb 6, 2012 6:48 PM, "Gabriel Lim" <gab.on.ra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi Gabriel - welcome to the RoR world,
>
> > You mention a couple of objectives in your message before; "Rails/Ruby and
> > programming in general".  Can I ask a couple of questions around this:
>
> > (a) Why do you want to learn programming?  Is this to get a job as a
> > developer, or just as a hobbie?  Something else?
> > (b) Which is more important; RoR or programming in general?  Would you
> > rather be known as the world's greatest RoR hacker or just someone who can
> > happily write programs in almost any language
> > (c) Do you have a timeframe around your learning?  6 months?  12 months?
> >  Whenever?
>
> > I think the answers to (a) and (b) will have a considerable impact on what
> > direction you want to take your learning in. Software dev is a big, BIG
> > world and there are lots of paths you can take.
>
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
>

> > *Andy Marks*
> > *Technical Principal*
> > ThoughtWorks Singapore
> > *email*: ama...@thoughtworks.bom
> > *mobile*: +65 9788 0259

> > *web*:www.thoughtworks.com

[Adrian Cumiskey]

Hi Gabriel,

I am from the UK and moved to Singapore mid 2010, then a year later I moved to the USA for a consulting opportunity, so I'm afraid I won't be making it to any of the SRB meetups for a while.

In total I have been programming for over 20 years now, and professionally for around 15 years.  I started with Perl and transitioned to Java, since then I have gained committership at the Apache Software Foundation and more recently consulted on SpringSource technology.  You'll probably find that the fundamentals of programming fairly straightforward, its just variables, conditions and loops.  But I am sure that over time you will find that there are a lot of concepts and patterns to learn in programming, many tricks, styles, and lots of fancy syntactic sugar (especially in Ruby) that you will learn and add to your toolkit, all of which will help you to write beautiful code.

Have fun, Adrian.