#learning rails

Nothing whatsoever comes close to plodding away on your computer and learning Rails by doing.

Playing around with code snippets in your IRB console, working along with Hartl's Rails Tutorial and taking a stab at your own basic Rails programs is hands-down the best way to learn programming with Ruby on Rails (or so I'm told by those people who actually know Ruby on Rails).

That aside, I am trying to jumpstart my knowledge and accelerate my learning by taking a more immersive approach.

I recently mentioned that I'm reading Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby. I read this book whenever I'm in a situation where I cannot sit in front of a computer with an internet connection for an extended period of time. This typically occurs during my morning and evening commutes between NYC and New Jersey. (Why I'm commuting in the first place is a whole other story, but I digress.)

My point is, don't sacrifice the time you could spend "doing" Rails, by just reading about it. Read about it when you are in a situation where doing is not an option.

Well, what about when reading about it isn't an option either? We're supposed to be drowning ourselves in Rails knowledge, right?! What about when you're exercising or driving your car or don't have a free hand for a 5-pound text-book?

For times like those, I listen to Ruby and Rails podcasts. I've tried out a few of them thus far, and will mention two that I like here. I'll add a few more down the line as I discover them.

The first one that I'd like to mention is Coderpath hosted by Miles Forrest and Curtis McHale. These guys are really comfortable in front of a microphone and have interviewed a slew of great guests including DHH himself. Listening to Coderpath feels like you're sitting in a room with a bunch of people who have been doing this stuff for years and absolutely love it. Their enthusiasm really comes across and makes it a breeze to listen to and absorb.

Their interviews and conversations are a real "who's who" in the world of Rails, and serve as a nice overview of many of the most well-known tools and applications. This is not meant to be something that will outright teach you how to code, but it will certainly help to familiarize you with the Rails community and some of its most widely used tools.

The second podcast that I'd like to mention is Learning Rails with Michael Slater and Christopher Haupt. Unlike Coderpath, Learning rails is more of a "how to" with regards to Rails. In fact, their 8-episode Podcast series is meant to serve as the intro to their free online Rails course which they offer on their site.

In addition to the 8 podcasts, they have 14 screencasts which make up the course itself. I have not watched these yet, but will once I finish Hartl's tutorial. These 8 podcasts really serve as a sound overview of how Ruby on Rails works, taught in a fairly straightforward manner.

Obviously just listening to these will not result in you being an instant Ruby developer, but hearing the material as presented from a different perspective can be helpful to having it all make sense. I've listened to the whole thing through twice now during my morning jogs, and it has certainly helped to familiarize myself with many of the core concepts and terminology used throughout the tutorial.

So there you have it. Coderpath and Learning Rails. Both are free and certainly worth checking out. Let me know what you think.

Hello World.

Like learning a new anything, sometimes the curve can be steep upfront. It's hard to know where to look to get started. These are some resources I frequently turn to for help with a project.

A note on books

Development books can and do go out of date quickly, however if used properly at the very least can assist you with your level of understanding about the topics at hand. 

Learning Resources

Agile Development with Rails (4th Edition), great intro to rails and goes into more depth later on about some of the rails concepts like ActiveRecord to give a better idea of how it all comes together. 

Michael Hartl's Learn Rails by Example is a particularly good intro to rails. It includes a strong focus on testing the application using RSpec and Webrat. It's available free online, or as a book or series of screencasts. It's all gold.

Ruby Rogues Podcast, this tends to cover a wide variety of topics, but I find the in-depth discussions in between all the jokes absolute gold. I could happily listen to these guys talk all day. It can be quite a bit more advanced, but I've learnt a lot from this through listening and searching for more information on what was discussed.

Ruby Flow, I subscribe to a few rss feeds on ruby, though I consider this one the most valuable. It has a range of discussions and post options, but there's generally a lot of newcomer focussed topics.

Ruby Koans, as a PHP developer migrating to Ruby, this was a gold mine for me. Something that teaches Ruby syntax through tests not only helps to cement your Ruby knowledge, but reinforces the test driven development culture that's so predominant in the community.

Your local Ruby/Rails community. Can not stress this enough. More than that embrace all the local web communities you can find, it helps to foster multidiscipline understanding which can make all the difference. The beer helps wash the awesome down. Here in Brisbane, there's a ton all available on Meetup. 

How do I ....? Resources

These could probably fit in the above category, however these are the resources I go to when I'm looking for an approach to a problem.

The Rails 3 Way, this could have gone in the above category honestly, however I've really enjoyed this book for it's how to for more complex tasks and quick references. 

Railscasts, an awesome free resource, showing off new gems, techniques and how to use them in your projects. I do recommend the paid pro version though, at only 9 bucks a month you get additional exclusive casts. Not to mention the free contributions are at least worth 9 dollars.

Rails Recipes, this is yet to be released, but the current beta version is retrievable from pragmatic programmers. Particularly good for a quick how-to on more advanced Rails concepts i.e. creating User Roles. 

The official Rails Guides, do an excellent job of providing a quick resource to help cement those key concepts.

I'm stuck, now what? Resources

We work on the web, so the best and easiest start for all of the above, is google it, however more often than not, knowing where to go first can help immensely.

Stack Overflow, a great questions and answers site, if it hasn't already been answered for you, chances are you will get your question solved.

IRC, the #rubyonrails channel on irc.freenode.net is practically a 24 hour support service. Though I recommend availing all other options first if you can help it.

The Ruby on Rails mailing list, lots of helpful people here. Always a learning experience looking through the questions as well.