Persistent Rails Course Issues due to using Windows 8 & Rails -v 4.2

I've experiencing a lot of dead-ends and frustration due to unfinished courses trying to learn Ruby on Rails. I love Treehouse - I've learned and applied a lot from HTML, CSS and PHP courses - but learning Rails has been so difficult because of unnecessary hindrances that I'm considering ending my membership in favor of a competitor site, like CodeSchool or Lynda. I don't mean to sound "threatening," I just preface this post with that to express how deeply frustrating this has been for me. And judging from many forum threads I've come across while trying to resolve my many issues, it's safe to say that I'm far from the only one.

I started with a series of 4 or 5 beginner level Ruby courses. Workspace sometimes failed to respond appropriately, but restarting it always worked. Jason did a great job with the courses, and I developed a firm understanding of the fundamentals of Ruby.

Next, I went through the course on Installing a Ruby Development Environment (https://teamtreehouse.com/library/installing-a-ruby-development-environment) This is when I began to experience frustration. At least a handful of times during that course I had to stop because a command prompt statement did not process for me the way it did in the course. I had to spend several hours on what should have been a 30 minute course rectifying issues through dozens of Google searches, clicking from link to link to link, finding out how to resolve issues and implementing complex work-arounds. However, at least in the end I did get my environment setup correctly, finished the course, and felt ready to proceed to some Rails courses to learn what I really started this adventure for.

Well, sadly that has not happened. I started the "Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application" course (https://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-simple-ruby-on-rails-application) full of hope. But a few modules in that hope was crushed by my app completely ceasing to work from the code I had been instructed to use in it. It was at this point, after putting several hours into the course already, that I discovered on the forums that I was using version 4 of Rails, and major differences between Rails 3 and 4 are why I was experiencing issues.

Tremendously helpful Ruby moderator, Maciej Czuchnowski, pointed out in response to someone else's thread that it would be better to take the "Build a Todo List Application with Rails 4" course (https://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-todo-list-application-with-rails-4) if you already have Rails 4 installed. I was disappointed to get so far in a course I was enjoying only to have to quit and switch, but I did that to avoid further frustration. Unfortunately, I only had more frustration in store for me. The same thing happened in that course - reaching a point that I can't move beyond because my app ceased to function after updating the code as the course suggested.

More forum browsing and Google searches have taught me that Windows is a problematic platform to learn or use Ruby or Rails from. I was supposed to have solved that by using the Treehouse VM, which I did install along with Vagrant, but it doesn't seem to be working. At one point Jason Seifer had said something like "and you will notice that your project automatically saves to the correct folder now," and even though I had precisely followed his instructions that was not the case. Additionally, differences between Rails 4.0 and 4.2 may also causes issues. This platform seems to be incredibly sensitive, and implements major changes that throw everything off if you're using a version just one decimal point off.

Sorry for being verbose, but I think it is necessary to fully understand the problem in order to properly address it, and I know many other users can benefit from a better Rails education. In conclusion, what can be done on Treehouse's side to improve Ruby on Rails education? This post will act as a forum for people to make critically constructive suggestions, and for site administrators and teachers to respond if they wish.

In addition, I would greatly appreciate suggestions for me personally about how to proceed in my quest to learn Rails. At this point, I feel like uninstalling everything I've installed, and just painstakingly install the exact version of Ruby, Rails and any gems Jason uses for a given course in order to avoid problems... should I do that? And if so, is it OK to install multiple completely different versions of Ruby on the same system in order to take both the ODOT and Simple Rails App courses, or will that cause problems as well? ...lastly, since the Treehouse VM doesn't seem to be working and I don't know how to fix that, is there another (ideally free) VM or vitual software that is recommended for Windows users? If so, will using that circumvent having to alter some of the code, such as using rails instead of bin/rails, and other more obscure alternatives that I've had to research independently in order to proceed?

Thank you very much!

Dedicated Coder,

Sam Fitz