Working more efficiently in RoR

rubyonrails-talk
1

This may be a useful tool to better understand & find RoR concepts:

http://www.yoyobrain.com/cardboxes/preview/863

Add flashcards to your studies then click on cram with the learning wizard...

We're building this site to improve learning, so feedback on improvements and how to get this into the hands of developers is much appreciated. Feel free to email me too.

Best,

Elizabeth

2

I guess there are many ways of learning and it may depend on a developers individual preferences, which way he may like. But I'm sorry to say, that I really don't see much in this concept of repetitive memorizing of singular facts.

This may be a wonderful tool for students who have to prepare for tests, where such questions are likely to be asked, but everyday learning as you have to do as a developer works different

(my humble opinion)

minor technical issue: If the answer text doesn't fit in the frame, it's not possible to scroll it, since you're bound to keep the mouse over the flip button.

3

Hi Thorsten,

I appreciate your feedback. Some background- the idea for yoyobrain.com came from Will Bunker (match.com) who built the site to help him switch from .net to web 2.0, because drilling with the flashcards allowed him to work more efficiently so he didn't have to look things up all the time... This method may work for some developers, may not? I agree, the scrolling is important- we're going to work on that. The key feature of the site is the learning wizard that will drill you on flashcards, but people seem to not find it when they're on the site. Any suggestions on improving that usability aspect?

Thank you much,

Elizabeth

4

Hi Thorsten,

I appreciate your feedback. Some background- the idea for yoyobrain.com came from Will Bunker (match.com) who built the site to help him switch from .net to web 2.0, because drilling with the flashcards allowed him to work more efficiently so he didn't have to look things up all the time... This method may work for some developers, may not?

Yes, I agree. As mentioned I can speak only for myself and out of practical experience.

I agree, the scrolling is important- we're going to work on that.

It's a minor issue. Allowing to click the flip button and fix the card would do.

The key feature of the site is the learning wizard that will drill you on flashcards, but people seem to not find it when they're on the site. Any suggestions on improving that usability aspect?

Only to add a very large text at top of the page :slight_smile:

I just played around with it and came up with some points:

The questions are very short. It sometimes happened to me, that I didn't get the idea out of the question, but found that I would have known the answer. Maybe the questions could be enhanced with some real code examples, where the part that has to be answered is replaced with question marks.

The answers are often not very helpful. Just stating syntax or commands won't make anybody a developer. The answers should explain the usage and maybe link to further documentation. (and some code examples)

example: question: How do you search for a record by field value in table? answer: TableName.find_by_fieldname('value')

I often answered questions here in this forum that way. Only to find, that people (mainly beginners) don't get it. The unavoidable next question is: I typed TableName.find_by_fieldname('value') in my code and got this or that error, because they copied exactly that code. You must explain, that TableName must be replaced by the name of the model in use and fieldname by the name of the field (Really! :wink: By the way the answer isn't accurate, it should be Model.find_by_fieldname('value') since tablenames are plural and lowercase while models are named singular and uppercase

Another example: Questions about Model relationship. It's nice to know, that belongs_to defines a relation. But there should be some info, how to set up the database tables for that Or maybe questions could be chained? Q: How define a many-to-one relationship? Q2: What column does the many side need? A2: modelname_id Q3: If defined Login belongs_to Client, how can you get all records belonging to @client? A3: @client.logins ...

Best feature would be: Take a real world oss project that makes use of as much rails features as possible and base your questions/answers on that and then let the answer point to a place in the code where this feature is used in context.