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Ruby

Posted by ivor
ivor
2,760 Points

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the course Build a Todo List Application with Rails 4.

I have read a book about Ruby (PickAxe), almost finished the Ruby tracks in TreeHouse, I finished RubyMonk and watched Ruby Essential Training from Lynda. I have practice quite a bit and I feel I get the language by now but the course Build a Todo List Application with Rails 4 surprised me and not in a good way. Is there anything I can learn before diving into RSpec/Capybara? I understand the syntax but maybe the course is going too fast? As you can see I'm not the only one: https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/opinions-for-ruby-lectures

2 Answers

Owen Tran
Owen Tran
6,822 Points
Owen Tran
Owen Tran
6,822 Points

Same here. When I started this course I just followed along then half way through I abandoned it lost a lot of confidence, then I saw a lot of people having the same issues. I went to learn ruby then returned to finish the course just following along. After the course I realised I didn't learn much at all.

Problem with the course: RSPEC, IMO should be introduced in a seperate course. Scaffolding is too much "rails magic" not a great way to learn.

Like many others I started Michael Hartl's free ebook which is amazing. It is challenging but eases you in very slowly and eexplains the small details to a near beginner.

Codecademy has a new rails course (free) which also eases you in very slowly. This has you building 2 or 3 very basic apps in maybe half hour. Each one building on complexity.

Once you have experience with testing and have the basics down then the odot course will make sense and is actually very good.

If you plan on doing multiple tutorials, don't get bogged down on the smallest details. If for example you didn't fully understand routes in one tutorial, chances are after 2 more tutuorials explaining the same thing in different ways you will pick it up. It's easy to miss details watching videos. Repetition, different perspectives and fresh approaches will drill it in. There is huge overlap in tutorials. After you are comfortable, maybe revisit the tutorials you found to be most helpful/challenging.

Last tip, I would recommend just creating a new rails app every now and then (even one or more a day), build a new app from scratch, use as much as you learned thus far, style away. Your first few apps will look like crap, delete it and start again.

Good luck

ivor
ivor
2,760 Points

Thanks Owen, I'm in the middle of Chapter 5 of Michael Hartl's book and now I know what you were referring to.

Joe Dayvie
Joe Dayvie
11,956 Points
Joe Dayvie
Joe Dayvie
11,956 Points

Ivor,

You are certainly not alone and I was in the same position. I would say that this course is what really made me branch out to explore other resources as well. Treehouse is amazing and I will always be here to use =) With that said, I think that course is not placed right and its too overwhelming. I began looking at other courses and I began to understand the foundations of Rails better. I am yet to complete it (mostly because I have been working on other areas) but I will return to it!

With my knowledge of rails, I built my own blog site (http://www.joedayvie.com) and will continue to use Treehouse and other resources to continue learning more. Ultimately I think you should make sure to have a good foundation of how Rails works. It's great to understand Ruby but Rails is a whole different monster that needs to be understood. There are SO many aspects that it really is overwhelming.

If you ever want to chat, have questions, etc., feel free to always contact me if you wish. As someone who is learning Rails with a goal of being a full stack Rails developer, I may be able to help =P

Joe

ivor
ivor
2,760 Points

Thank you, Joe! I'm actually going to start the Full Stack Dev program at Bloc.io and I'm trying to wrap my head around Ruby/Rails, I have some programming background but RSpec confused the hell out of me, I'll walk away from the TreeHouse Rails track for now and hopefully come back later.

madebyivor at Twitter.