Technologies need to know before starting ror development?

Hi can any body tell me wat are the technologies need to know before starting learning ror. and tell me the sequence of learning ROR.(including list of softwares and editors) pls..

It depends on what you would like to do. But as far as I am concerned you do not need a lot to know if you are already familiar with website development.

  • The usual technologies apply: javascript, your favorite SQL.
  • The sequence of learning is almost developers preference, though there are paradigms that are promoted. Like Behavior Driven Development (using such techs as Cucumber and RSpec/Shoulda)
  • Editors: There is no magic behind any editor. If you are an old hardcore geek emacs, vi, vim and friends might be cool for you. If you are a dot.com generation, then you may want an IDE like Netbeans, Rubymine and Geany. They are good at suggesting object methods almost “on the fly” (or after pressing the usual “pressing causality”, TAB :slight_smile: ). If you are interested in “Editor and OS” fights, you can get more on this forum. People have been battling over these for sometime now, and it is NP-Complete :slight_smile: !! : http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk
  • One thing you should understand is that Rails (Just as Ruby itself) is fast changing. Most of the resources that we have on-line or books currently in print may not be very relevant. For example, I myself use Rails 2.3.2 and 2.3.5 depending on my projects. But this implies I am missing a lot because there is RoR 3.0.0 out there right now, and many things have changed in between these versions including programming techniques like how we create and run Rails apps.
  • There are still better tutorials online, including how to setup Rails on a machine of your preference (Windows, Linux, Mac). When it comes to that, Google is your friend, just google for what you want. This link might be of help to you: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html. I would also do injustice if I would not point you to the resource I used when I was starting Rails. I used Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd edition). But as you notice on it web page, the book is out print now. But I hope it is still available in bookshops. Right now, 3rd and 4th editions are available for purchase. They cover at least recent changes to Rails. For me, I still respect the 2nd edition because it is the one that taught me how to “role on Rails”. Good luck, boss. Happy coding!!

Familiarize the 3 (html tags, cascading style sheets and javascript) are the basics. :wink: and you're good to go. Next DB storage for DB driven sites. These items are for the noob.

cheers, Andre

Hello, I'm not an expert, don't believe me :wink: But I agree with others: W3 basics are useful, because you won't understand the picture in Rails.

So first HTML+CSS+JavaScript, hopefully from The Source:

Here you found the standards.

I think it's a good way to check how thing usually works on the net, so make an easy blog with a CMS, like WordPress. Don't involve deeply, just write basic notes about your development. Use Gmaps, Google Analitycs, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feed, so later you will know where to find your way or what a customer needs for example.

Since Rails is Ruby on Rails: Ruby is the programming language which used to build Rails, which is a web framework. It helped me a lot, that I started with Ruby, therefore code is not alien. And the most important: error messages meaningful.

Start it, play and try out everything you find, not just read it. Practise is more important then theory in this field. You will study the most from your fails, mostly when you have to rebuild something.

So the way I see useful: first only static pages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), then try out a CMS but don't study it much, then programming language Ruby, then the framework Rails.

Additional: Find a good mentor; Change to Unix based system (MacOS or Linux); Find out pages and webapps what you want to create - this will help you to achieve your goals, you won't give up!

good luck, Zoltán

Hopefully not. The real "Source" is http://w3.org, at least for HTML and CSS. It's been years since I looked at w3schools but it used to be an utter mess of missing and erroneous information. Read and bookmark the actual W3C recommendations as references.

A newcomer to the web should also read the HTTP RFCs.

Hassan Schroeder wrote in post #964318:

I'm not an expert, don't believe me :wink: But I agree with others: W3 basics are useful, because you won't understand the picture in Rails.

So first HTML+CSS+JavaScript, hopefully from The Source: http://www.w3schools.com/

Hopefully not. The real "Source" is http://w3.org, at least for HTML and CSS. It's been years since I looked at w3schools

Then don't write about it, since you clearly don't know what you're talking about here.

but it used to be an utter mess of missing and erroneous information.

Depends. Most of w3schools' HTML and CSS information that I've seen is pretty good. It's usually one of the first places I tell learners to go.

Read and bookmark the actual W3C recommendations as references.

That won't help a beginner. Even after 12 years of Web design and development, I find those documents nearly unreadable.

A newcomer to the web should also read the HTTP RFCs.

Why on earth? That's like saying that to use your computer, you should first study basic electronics.

-- Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com twitter: @hassan

Best,

Depends. Most of w3schools' HTML and CSS information that I've seen is pretty good. It's usually one of the first places I tell learners to go.

Good for you. It's still not the definitive source for the HTML and CSS recommendations, whatever improvements they've made to it. Which I see no reason to waste time evaluating when the real thing is available.

Read and bookmark the actual W3C recommendations as references.

That won't help a beginner. Even after 12 years of Web design and development, I find those documents nearly unreadable.

My heart goes out to you -- but maybe other people won't have that problem. Learning to read the canonical documents wouldn't seem like such an ambitious goal. :slight_smile:

A newcomer to the web should also read the HTTP RFCs.

Why on earth?

Because there are people posting here who obviously have no idea how HTTP really works. I think that's essential for someone doing "web development".

But remaining ignorant is certainly an option -- even a popular one in some quarters, apparently.

Hassan Schroeder wrote in post #964393:

Depends. Most of w3schools' HTML and CSS information that I've seen is pretty good. It's usually one of the first places I tell learners to go.

Good for you. It's still not the definitive source for the HTML and CSS recommendations, whatever improvements they've made to it.

Of course it isn't. But it *is* geared to learners, which the official spec is not.

Which I see no reason to waste time evaluating

Then don't waste time expressing unfounded opinions about it.

when the real thing is available.

The real thing is the definitive reference. It is not geared to learners. I think that if a raw beginner tried to learn HTML from the official spec, he'd never get out of the starting gate.

Read and bookmark the actual W3C recommendations as references.

That won't help a beginner. Even after 12 years of Web design and development, I find those documents nearly unreadable.

My heart goes out to you -- but maybe other people won't have that problem. Learning to read the canonical documents wouldn't seem like such an ambitious goal. :slight_smile:

I perhaps overstated a little. I do refer to the spec for reference. But I don't think it's meant for learners.

A newcomer to the web should also read the HTTP RFCs.

Why on earth?

Because there are people posting here who obviously have no idea how HTTP really works. I think that's essential for someone doing "web development".

Yes. But again, the RFC, while the definitive references, is probably not the best introduction. I think a high-level explanation of the HTTP request cycle is probably more helpful.

But remaining ignorant is certainly an option -- even a popular one in some quarters, apparently.

Unfortunately, it seems so.

-- Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com twitter: @hassan

Best,

Of course it isn't. But it *is* geared to learners, which the official spec is not.

Whatever you say. I (and I'm sure many others) learned from the recommendations and `view source` because that was all there was at the time -- never seemed to be an insurmountable problem.

Which I see no reason to waste time evaluating

Then don't waste time expressing unfounded opinions about it.

Unfounded? If you recall, I said w3schools *used to be* full of errors; it may or may not still be true, so -- caveat student. That's all.