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Howdy,
So, I've been trying to learn Ruby programming, as my first real programming language, for a few weeks now. I've taken the Udemy beginners course, some CodeAcademy stuff, the TeamTreehouse Ruby foundation course - as well as reading a few "new to programming books". I've taken notes on more or less every Ruby topic and looked up specific blog posts, screencasts (and the like) on those topics, to get a deeper understanding.
I'm now at a point where I know how to do a lot of things with Ruby. I have a bad tendency however, also with things like modern Languages. I tend to forget them very easily. I'm trying to get a good understanding of Ruby for a purpose. That being, to learn Ruby on Rails and RubyMotion. I have a decent background in HTML5/CSS3 and a little jQuery as well.
I suppose my question is this. What do I do now? What is the best route to take? I've played around with RoR a lot, before I took all of these Ruby courses - I understood it (it's not very hard to understand), but without a background in Ruby, I struggled to create anything other than tutorial-based applications or my own very basic CRUD applications. Perhaps I should jump into RoR now? I'm worried that I'll again start following a bunch of tutorials and lose all of my Ruby knowledge.
Should I be sticking to Ruby programming for a while longer, before attempting to learn a whole new beast? At the same time, I don't want to be going into stuff that'll be redundant to my overall goal. Should I be trying to create more of MY OWN small Ruby programs - and when I feel comfortable that I'm writing good Ruby, move onto Rails?
Any advice from people who are going through the same challenge, or perhaps any experts out there? would be fantastic!
Best, Sam
5 Answers
James Barnett
39,199 PointsThe best way to learn a first programming language is through lots of small exercises.
I'd suggest you work your way through the exercises in Learn to Program.
Thanks for that James. Learn to Program was probably the best book I've read on programming thus far. I think his method of teaching is definitely the way to go, although I did run into some troubles completing some of the more difficult exercises - I found it rather enjoyable searching through other programmers solutions!
I have an idea for a small program that I'd certainly enjoy building - so I think that's going to be my next step. What I'm actually worried about is getting it to all work, but not following best practices, creating something insecure etc. Is there a secret hidden Ruby community whereby I could create said program - and then get some solid feedback on it? i.e You could of put these methods into a module, or used these methods instead etc.
Nick Pettit
Treehouse TeacherHi Sammy,
The best way to learn and retain knowledge is by using it. I worked on a WordPress theme last night after a 3-year hiatus from PHP programming. I didn't forget anything, because even though I was away from it for a long time, I had worked on lots of real-world PHP projects in the past.
It sounds like you're more than ready to start learning Ruby on Rails. Why not try Building a Simple Ruby on Rails Application or our Become a Web Developer Learning Adventure? Those would be great places to go next. :)
Looks like I'll give the Adventure a go as well, cheers Nick :)
Steve Monsen
5,207 PointsI'm in roughly the same boat. Here are a few resources off the top of my head for going beyond tutorials and books, etc:
Other Ruby scripts and programs to see how others code in the real world...
http://www.hotscripts.com/category/scripts/ruby-on-rails/scripts-programs/
https://github.com/languages/Ruby
(gotta be careful, though... just because it's on github or hotscripts doesn't mean it's well written. Good opportunities for debugging and refactoring though once you know what you're doing.)
Good Rails forum:
http://www.railsforum.com/ (aptly named)