Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trialTristan Gaebler
6,204 PointsHow are the rails courses?
How good are the rails courses? Will they teach me ruby on rails good enough so that I can start building applications? Any advice for me? I'm about to finish git basics and moving on to the ruby stuff on the rails course.
5 Answers
Brandon Barrette
20,485 PointsJust do the ODOT application and not the Treebook application. ODOT is written in Rails 4 (the current version), while Treebook is written in Rails 3.2 and is quite out of date. Some of the ideas from the Treebook application could be easily transferred over once you've learned rails 4 through the ODOT videos.
I learned quite a bit from Treehouse vids because this is a good baseline. So I would have an idea of something I wanted to implement and would expand on an idea Jason had already taught. Using google and stackoverflow helped a lot when I was stuck.
One thing I think that was not done well is learning how to write tests. I think Jason does a bit better with it during the ODOT application, but there is still a lot I have yet to understand or do in order to have a really polished working RoR site.
Tristan Gaebler
6,204 PointsExplain the difference between ODOT and the treebook application.
Tristan Gaebler
6,204 PointsWhich courses are the rails 3.2 courses?
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 PointsThese are Rails 3 courses:
Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application
Building Social Features in Ruby on Rails
Advanced Social Features in Ruby on Rails
You can later get bak to them for inspiration on how to implement friendships or how a social networking app could be done in Rails, however this requires you to use Rails 3.2 or know how to translate it into Rails 4.
Tristan Gaebler
6,204 PointsThanks
David Gross
19,443 PointsBoth are really good. ODOT uses rails 4.0 withRspec tests and Treebook uses rails 3.2 Unit::Tests. You use alot more gems in Treebook then you do in ODOT. They are two totally different applications. Treebook is twitter like while ODOT is a daily planner. I would do ODOT first but also do Treebook.
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 PointsMy honest opinion: they are quite good, but often caused some confusion (this could very well be my fault, not the courses' fault). I needed to use other sources simultanouesly to get a deeper understanding and bigger picture to dare and write my own apps. I still use Treehouse Rails videos as reference sometimes.