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Ruby

Zakry Zapata
Zakry Zapata
15,494 Points

Rails Track: Should I do Build a Simple Rails App first?

I noticed that the first major project of the rails track, the odot project, seems to assume alot of previous knowledge about rails, such as the controllers, databases, testing, routes, etc. This has not been covered before, but I know enough from other resources to know that this has been skipped over, so I am wondering if I should do an older rails course first in order to get the most out of this track?

Or, will these topics be covered in a later course in the track that I am currently unaware of? It seems to me that the rails project is more of a tutorial rather than a course, with us just following along as he goes through the standard procedures of making a simple rails app, without really explaining exactly what we are doing and why.

I am not sure if this is intentional, or if perhaps there is another course I should look at in order to get a more in-depth view into exactly what we are doing.

Thanks

4 Answers

Rachelle Wood
Rachelle Wood
15,362 Points

Just looking at the courses you completed (OP), I would suggest taking the Ruby track first before doing Rails at the very least. You are missing out on most of what Ruby has to offer!

I made the same mistake. After finishing Front-end Dev, I went straight onto the Rails track and got lost. About the Rails course itself, I can't say since I realized my mistake pretty quickly and went to the Ruby track instead. It looks like there are some courses in the Ruby Treehouse library that may go into more depth on Rails. One suggestion would be the workshop called Rails Application Walkthrough...

Chris Ward
Chris Ward
12,129 Points

I was wondering the same thing myself. I'm hoping there is a course that really explains things. Odot is as clear as mud.

Rails Duck
Rails Duck
8,545 Points

You should technically start with a simple project. Start with these basic concepts first.

  • Gem control
  • Deploying
  • Git
  • Scaffolding
  • Rake

Afterwards, you could go onto harder concepts like testing and other things. I would highly recommend these websites to learn beginner stuff:

1.) http://hackcasts.io/ <- DEFINITELY 2.) http://onemonth.com/ 3.) http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/rails-development 4.) http://codeschool.com/ 5.) http://lynda.com/

You may also want to checkout something like https://www.railstutorial.org which I found to be a great intro to rails. It's a good way to get your feet wet by building a few projects, plus it's free. When I first jumped into the odot project, I felt like just copying down code but without the actual knowledge of what I was doing.