Learning how to Learn Rails

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Ruby on Rails

Learning how to Learn Rails

Author: Andrew Brown

1. Get a Mac

I'm serious. If you don't have a Mac then give up or expect lots of pain, no help or sympathy.

99.9% of the Rails community are running on Macs.

Almost all Rails learning material is written with the expectation that you're using a Mac.

For making the jump over to Mac you can expect to be hand-held through the roughest times.

Once you get your Mac read Hive Logic's Article on Setting up Rails

2. Use the Rails and Ruby Documentation

Always, always, always try looking for an answer to your Rails problem by reading the Rails or Ruby docs before asking for help.

Upon asking questions most developers will paste you links and try to send you to the docs, so try just checking the docs first before asking.

Offical Doc Websites

Alt Doc Websites (w/ Offline Versions)

3. Read the Changelogs and Commits

Rails is progressively changing, and its important to keep up-to-date by reading the changelog and commits.

Where to see the Changes to Rails

4. Live in the IRC (Chatrooms)

Interact with other developers in real time, via IRC.

Just ask a question, and sit and wait for an answer. Some developers are more generous then others with helping.

If you spend enough time here, you may end up paying it forward by helping other developers less knowledgeable then yourself.

Get the IRC Program Colloquy for the mac and start joining conversations.

Recommend IRC Channels

rubyonrails
ruby
git
mysql
apache

5. Video Tutorials

The best part about the Rails community is the large amount of videos available online.

They'll handhold you through anything and everything.

Check out Railscasts, check out Railscasts and check out Railscasts.

6. Forums, Mailing Lists, and Ticket Trackers

If you can't get help right away in the chatrooms, they'res other places to ask.

Forums

Go and post a topic on the Rails Forum to ask general questions about anything.

Mailing Lists

To get a specific answer to a specific problem, subscribe to a mailing list and ask questions there. For example, if you get stuck trying to fix an html glitch the wsg mailing list is the best place to get help

Ticket Trackers (Lighthouse)

Sometimes if something isn't working for you there may actually be a bug with rails or a rails plugin or ruby gem, etc… Take a look at some Ruby on Rails tickets to see what I'm talking about.

7. Stay Current

Visit RailsEnvy every Wednesday for their weekly podcast about whats going on in the Rails community. Very entertaining and very good resources. Visit RailsEnvy.

9. Download Existing Rails Apps

The best way of learning how to build Rails App is by example. Start downloading some projects at GitHub

Recommended Rails Apps

Mehpisto - Blogging System
Altered Beast - Forum System
Spotus - Online Community

10. Learn your Javascript

You should buy this book and learn Prototype and Scriptaculous. If you heard of JQuery and like using it. Forget about it, and learn Prototype. If you still want to use JQuery after that then go ahead.

11. Recommended Rails Plugins

Try using these for your Rails Project

Mantras to remember

Convention over Configuration
Underdo your Competition
Now is better than later
Clarity over Cleverness

11 Comments

11 Comments

anteaya said – Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:22:51 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Simply acknowledging those who do not know rails is a very helpful starting point.

Thank you,
Anita.
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RLLillis said – Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:33:15 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Ruby programming language per Wikipedia

Ruby on Rails per Wikipedia

Ruby on Rails for the Rest of Us by Digital Web Magazine

Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials – the first has some great explainations too
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Andrew Brown said – Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:46:48 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

It’d probably be also good for me to mention HiveLogic’s Installation Tutorial for Rails
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Gaelin Brown said – Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:09:39 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Informative and Imaginitive. Waiting for more.
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Andrew Brown said – Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:42:26 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )
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kamal said – Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:40:17 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

This is helpful, thanks!
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glenngillen said – Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:54:39 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Things have moved on a little since this post, I’ve created an updated list of the Top 50 ruby on rails tutorials that are still relevant. Hopefully someone finds it useful.
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UMS said – Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:29:29 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Useful article but Rails has come a long way since this post, jquery has really taken off and Rails 3 will support it ‘out of the box’, also there are a lot of Linux users now, including me. I’ve fallen in love with GMate (http://github.com/lexrupy/gmate/) and gitHub (http://github.com) – people may also want to check out:

haml & sass (gem)

Inherited Resources (gem) – cuts out a lot of the scaffold-like code from your controllers

Formtastic (gem) – create forms the easy way
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csn said – Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:24:40 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Generally a good post but I have a serious problem with 1:

“1. Get a Mac

I’m serious. If you don’t have a Mac then give up or expect lots of pain, no help or sympathy. …"

I think the above statement isn’t just plain silly (pure bs in my opinion) but irresponsible too; the person is the limiting factor not the machine!

I have been using Rails for the past year or so and have been doing just fine with my dual boot (Win7/Ubuntu, both 64-bit) HP Pavilion DV9700t laptop, which, incidentally, cost about $500 less than a similarly speced 15" MacBook Pro. In addition, the HP hardware is far more robust and reliable than the Mac.

I run Rails on the Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit OS and use Kate or GEdit with the GMate plugin. I even installed the RubyMine rails IDE just to try it out, which worked fine. Also, I never had any problems with running any tutorial from Railscasts or PeepCode, running sample apps. etc., etc.

So my advise to someone who is just starting out, and a.) doesn’t have a giant bank account or b.) doesn’t want to be gouged by Apple, is to get a laptop (HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, or what ever) and throw your favorite Linux distro on it. You’ll be able to do everything the Mac stooges can (in some cases setting things up on Linux are even easier), and you’ll be developing Rails apps with easy (depending on how fast you learn) in no time.
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csn said – Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:57:31 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Generally a good post but I have a serious problem with 1:

“1. Get a Mac

I’m serious. If you don’t have a Mac then give up or expect lots of pain, no help or sympathy. …"

I think the above statement isn’t just plain silly (pure bs in my opinion) but irresponsible too; the person is the limiting factor not the machine!

I have been using Rails for the past year or so and have been doing just fine with my dual boot (Win7/Ubuntu, both 64-bit) HP Pavilion DV9700t laptop, which, incidentally, cost about $500 less than a similarly speced 15" MacBook Pro. In addition, the HP hardware is far more robust and reliable than the Mac.

I run Rails on the Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit OS and use Kate or GEdit with the GMate plugin. I even installed the RubyMine rails IDE just to try it out, which worked fine. Also, I never had any problems with running any tutorial from Railscasts or PeepCode, running sample apps. etc., etc.

So my advise to someone who is just starting out, and a.) doesn’t have a giant bank account or b.) doesn’t want to be gouged by Apple, is to get a laptop (HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, or what ever) and throw your favorite Linux distro on it. You’ll be able to do everything the Mac stooges can (in some cases setting things up on Linux are even easier), and you’ll be developing Rails apps with easy (depending on how fast you learn) in no time.
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csn

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csn said – Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:58:14 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )

Generally a good post but I have a serious problem with 1:

“1. Get a Mac

I’m serious. If you don’t have a Mac then give up or expect lots of pain, no help or sympathy. …"

I think the above statement isn’t just plain silly (pure bs in my opinion) but irresponsible too; the person is the limiting factor not the machine!

I have been using Rails for the past year or so and have been doing just fine with my dual boot (Win7/Ubuntu, both 64-bit) HP Pavilion DV9700t laptop, which, incidentally, cost about $500 less than a similarly speced 15" MacBook Pro. In addition, the HP hardware is far more robust and reliable than the Mac.

I run Rails on the Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit OS and use Kate or GEdit with the GMate plugin. I even installed the RubyMine rails IDE just to try it out, which worked fine. Also, I never had any problems with running any tutorial from Railscasts or PeepCode, running sample apps. etc., etc.

So my advise to someone who is just starting out, and a.) doesn’t have a giant bank account or b.) doesn’t want to be gouged by Apple, is to get a laptop (HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, or what ever) and throw your favorite Linux distro on it. You’ll be able to do everything the Mac stooges can (in some cases setting things up on Linux are even easier), and you’ll be developing Rails apps with easy (depending on how fast you learn) in no time.
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csn

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