Hello all, just giving a quick introduction before I go back to lurking for now
I'm a C#/ASP.NET developer who is quickly becoming interested in Ruby/RoR. I've bought the book "Agile Web Development with Rails" and I'm starting to work through it, the only problem I run into seems to be a lack of any real "ideas" that I could turn into a RoR app in order to learn more of how things work; I can only learn so much by reading the book.. it feels like I'm not learning anything but just typing what I see, and then I see all of these advanced RoR applications online and feel as though I'm not going to be able to grasp it.
I've actually started to chronicle my journey with a brand new website/blog: http://www.rubykoolaid.com (I've only just started it, so it's a bit bare right now). I look forward to participating a bit more on the forums and groups for RoR in the future; I'm really starting to enjoy the language, the community and the framework.
Welcome aboard Wayne! I am fresh on the scene just as you are, and I
know what you mean about the Agile book! I too felt like I was just
typing what I saw, and not really learning from it. I found that after
working through the samples, going back and reading it over again
really helped to understand why I did what I did.
I am also new to RoR. But I'm not from .NET or any MS technologies (not that there's anything wrong with that - (ahem, wink, wink)). I'm a Mac OS X guy. Also, I'm fairly new to programming in general. I've learned a lot in a pretty short time (about a year). I started with Perl. Some people may think that's crazy. It didn't seem too bad to me though. I'm certainly no expert, but I got through O'Reilly Learning Perl and Intermediate Perl. I wrote a few simple to moderately complex web apps using Perl and MySQL (after reading the Paul DuBois book).
Then I learned that the Perl web apps I was writing with DBI (DBD:mysql) and CGI.pm were monolithic and my programs were big messy balls of code intertwining DB, program logic, display code, etc. I found out about MVC and Ruby on Rails and I got the pragprog Programming Ruby and Agile Web Development with Rails books (both 2nd ed.). I'm almost finished with the Rails book. I think I'm understanding pretty well, with some areas that I'll need to 3.times.read again for sure.
So, I'll be a lurker on this forum for awhile, at least until I finish reading the book and start migrating the Perl/MySQL programs to RoR. Then I may have some real newbie questions.
I hope that your group will have and tolerate a fledgling like me.
Actually, I am also new to RoR. I finished the "Agile Web Development
with Rails 2edition". When I develop a rail application, I need to go
through the book first and then develop. One more things it seems it
needs more plugins in order to work well. I am continuing to read
"Ajax on Rails". Maybe I need some sample applications. I need the
great ideas and philosophy about the rails application. The last thing
I am afraid of is I could to the wrong way that idiomatic rails
developers won't go that way. I need the help from this group pretty
sure.
Everyone is a newb at some point. If you want answers to questions I suggest the obvious:
1) Try to at least search the web for an answer first.
2) Try to be succinct about the problem. Avoid half page introductions.
3) Try to abstract the problem. Unless it is a tricky coding issue most people will not read your code.
There are plenty of blogs that present idiomatic samples, and after just working with the code for a while you will pick them up. Definitely be curious about how Rails works and read the code. The more you are exposed to the existing code the easier it will be to write code that leverages what is there, rather than works at cross purposes.
So, I'll be a lurker on this forum for awhile, at least until I
finish reading the book and start migrating the Perl/MySQL programs
to RoR. Then I may have some real newbie questions.
Pay close attention to the unit testing - it's part of what makes Rails so incredibly rapid.
