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Ruby Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application Customizing Forms Creating Relationships

Why do you not update this video since it doesn't work anymore with current Ruby and Rails versions?

Or why don't you add a video on changing your installed Ruby and Rails versions for a project so that they match this video?

For you to collect payments for people to watch a video that no longer works seems not so ethical? For 50,000 people X $25 I would imagine you have the funds to re-shoot videos or add in videos on re-setting versions to historical versions of Ruby and Rails???

Otherwise, you simply get to a point in the video where nothing works anymore - not a great value proposition, right? Plus there are endless forums for everyone having the same problem but if there is a correct answer, it's currently a needle in the google haystack.. Super frustrated.

Started this video from lesson 1 again and now did it twice, installed the code download once which creates a mess. Anyway, i don't see a fix once you post outdated videos that don't function. A very frustrating mess methinks.

Justin Foss
Justin Foss
Courses Plus Student 8,808 Points

^^^^Yes, this. I love Treehouse in general, but holy *&%!. All it would take is a quick 5-10 minute video prepended to the beginning of this series that essentially says "If you are using Rails 4, you're gonna have a bad time. Here is how to use Rails 3 and here is how to use Ruby 1.9.whatever."

I usually hate to be a person who comes on the forums and brings things down, but this has been hands down one of the most frustrating experiences I have had learning code so far. Each video ends up taking about 30 minutes to get through, 2/3 of which I am spending staring at error messages and rooting through the forums for solutions.

7 Answers

Have to agree with the above. I am not a newbie but I am new to rails. I was able to get through a lot of the treebook app but then the glitches began and they just multiply. I was looking forward to learning paperclip and some other gem implementation in the subsequent related courses but you killed it with the out of date course from the outset. Pretty disappointed

James Barnett. The Rails Development track is not very good - it lacks something like the Build a Simple Rails Application. I am on that track and got to ODOT which is incomprehensible for a new developer following this track.

Anyway, have others take this track and get equally frustrated. OR, just add an appropriate lesson to the track which would be how to build a simple ruby application for updated Rails versions. Try taking the ODOT course - I'd say it sucks, but it's more appropriate to say that it's an ADVANCED course for those familiar with Rails who want to learn RSPEC, after they can Build A Simple Ruby Application (but for a beginner, that course does suck).

Why, if Ruby on Rails is so hot that you don't invest in a better track I do not understand.

Treehouse is great, but when you throw a Calculus course in a 5th grade curriculum, you frustrate students. It's not that Calculus (i.e. RSPEC) is bad or that students are stupid, but you'll just frustrate learners throwing them inappropriate content before they are ready - this is what that ODOT course does.

Treehouse fails big time on glitches like this - mostly it's great - but outdated content not being updated, courses that represent an inappropriate learning progression without any way to correct is super frustrating and where online learning crashes and burns.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Ruby on Rails courses here on Treehouse have changed a lot in the few short years since the Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application course came out.

Today your best bet to learn Rails with Treehouse is to follow the Learn Rails Development track.

When you finish with your the track you'll have a good foundation to build on with your Ruby knowledge. You can then check out all of the other great Ruby-related content in Treehouse Library. You'll notice the library let's you sort courses newest first to get an idea of how old the course you are interested in is.

I'll agree with you: I don't care much at all for test-driven development. And neither does DHH (creator of Rails). It's just a practice that a lot of Rails developers (and developers in general, for that matter) have found useful to emulate.

But the Odot app is still a good course that teaches a lot of important Rails skills, even with the (in my opinion) baggage of TDD. You seem to sing Treebook's praises, but even Treebook has a lot of TDD in it.

I went through the Odot course a few months after Rails 4.0 came out (after stumbling through the Treebook course for awhile), and I thought the Odot courses were executed much better than the Treebook courses. Devise, for one, is an insanely complicated gem (though powerful) that's more than a little too overkill for a beginner's project. The user authentication course in Odot is much better, and I actually learned something from it.

Also in Odot, Jason explained a lot of the theory behind Rails. Rails is pretty opinionated, and you kinda have to play the game by its rules (MVC, convention before configuration, etc.) to make a good app. But Jason explained all that very well in the Odot course, much more clearly than in the Treebook course in my opinion.

The only part of the Odot courses I haven't liked is the TDD stuff. Testing is very important, but it's secondary to actually building the app. And TDD is just frustrating. It's so hard for a project to evolve when you put your tests before your app. I'd prefer putting the testing stuff in a separate (but parallel) course; that way, beginners could learn how to build the app, and then learn testing after they finish.

Anyway, I'll try to address the problems you have with the Treebook courses. You say that you're having problems with Rails 3.2; my guess is that you're not specifying the versions of the gems that are compatible with Rails 3.2, and so Bundler is defaulting to the newest gem version that works only with Rails ~> 4.0. To fix this, find the latest version of the gem that works with Rails 3.2, and specify it in your Gemfile. Then run bundle update and everything should work fine.

As an addendum, and like Maciej Czuchnowski said, the mods here on the forums are not Treehouse employees. We're just student volunteers from the community.

Totally not ok. ODOT doesn't replace this course. The content of this course is good, it's just non-functional. I even installed the old rails version to go through this course now a THIRD time (totally FRUSTRATED!) per your recommendations and it errors out. ODOT is all rspec horrible advanced nastiness, while this course (IN THEORY) covers beginner content. Super dissappointed in this. Why do you not redo this video or explain how to install whatever environment you need to make it work.

What is most frustrating, is that on the third time now through this course, i followed all the notes (which I didn't see on round 1 and 2) and installed Treebook with the specific version of Rails that the notes suggest, now 5 hours and 3 days later it glitches out again. How do I learn deployment and all the content after it glitches out?

You might as well remove this course if you're not going to fix it.

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

You're currently talking to mods - students who just have more control on the forum, but do not represent Treehouse. To make them aware of all these things, tag them here or contact support. Forums are mostly visited by students and it's weird to read "change it!" when you're just another student :)

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

P.S. I totally agree with the points you're making here.

Flavio Amiel
Flavio Amiel
1,746 Points

Agree with Adam Zuckerberg - And it will be SO EASY to update it!

When Treehouse created the Treebook course, Rails 3.2 was the most recent version of Rails. That course is very old, and Rails has changed a lot since then. Treebook even used Bootstrap 1, which isn't even available for use anymore IIRC. Old material is not always accurate...

...which is why Treehouse published a new set of courses for Rails 4.x. The application you build is called Odot; it's a todo list app.