• Registered: 2013-01-07
  • Posts: 1

Topic: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

hello all,

Initially i started learning from agile web development with rails and then i thought of learning ruby first so i switched to PickAxe book. But i am finding pickAxe book very much difficult(although i was good at c++ programming). please suggest me that from where should i learn it now. online videos, or any reference links.

also i would like to ask should i learn ruby deeply for learning rails?

#my skills:PHP,CSS,HTML,Sass,Compass,Adobe Photoshop,Corel Draw,Adobe Illustrator,Adobe Dreamweaver

  • JWM2
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  • Registered: 2013-01-08
  • Posts: 18

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ - Heres a nice guide to help learn ruby. He uses cartoons and lots of jokes to keep everything light and enjoyable.

Really though you don't need to know much ruby to learn rails. I have been learning through video tutorials such as "Ruby on Rails 3: Rails by Example" and a Lynda video series. But just going through the videos and replicating their actions is not enough. You really start to put things together when you create your own app from scratch and then start tinkering with it. However I do suggest starting with a tutorial and build a couple demo sites going along with the book or video as a guide. After you have built a few functional (albeit very limited) sites you will get the hang of what needs to be done in order to create the app, pages, database and how to connect them all together. I just started learning Rails a few weeks ago, so i'm still new myself, but i've learned alot in the last few weeks. I also thought it would be good to know some ruby so I took a week or so off from Rails and dived into Ruby code. In the end it will help some, but nothing helps more than just diving in to Rails head first and googling the problems as they arise. That seems to be the consensus of how to learn Rails at least going by what i've seen so far. Good luck!

  • JWM2
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  • Registered: 2013-01-08
  • Posts: 18

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

Oh a few more things. It seems a lot of the examples they use in the various tutorials are built using older versions of Rails such as Rails 3 beta and some things have changed. You will need to hunt down some of the files/newer version. It seems the directory structure has also changed some. IE: the css folder is no longer in the Public directory, instead its in the APP directory. Little things like this will keep you on your toes. Also they tend to use older versions of gems, which makes perfect sense since they were using an older version of Rails while creating the videos/books. So you might need to see how to install the latest version of the gem in question. Another thing is some tuts use the blueprint css bootstrap and it seems these days the twitter bootstrap is most commonly used. It took me about an hour to get the blueprint bootstrap in the right location (for Rails by Example 3) and loaded into my demo app, but it was worth the extra work just to learn how Rails functions now vs a year ago. I wish i had some updated materials to give you, but its not hard to adapt todays projects (Rails apps) to work with yesterday's examples. Just remember to use today's methods in apps you create.

  • Registered: 2013-01-21
  • Posts: 2

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

Hi Moneysharma, I've had exactly the same experience as you.  I started with Agile Web Development and just couldn't get my head around it so I read the Pickaxe book for a few days to try and pick up some Ruby and now I've gone back to Agile Web Development.

I still struggle to get my head around the whole thing or whats passing what to where and whats calling what etc but I'll keep plodding on and hopefully it will start to click into place. It's not so much the Ruby side of it I struggle with, its the whole MVC framework idea. Having never used a framework before its a lot to take in for me.

  • Registered: 2013-02-12
  • Posts: 2

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

I've been learning Rails as of recently too, and one resource I find useful is Daniel Kehoe's Rails App Project. Basically he has some app starter setups hosted on Github along with tutorials provided for each one. Some of the tutorials themselves require a paid membership, but others are free.

Anyway, he goes into the initial setup of an app like many of the other tutorials out there, but he ties in some useful gems that many Rails developers are using today for critical but often time-consuming requirements like user authentication and authorization. I was finding that I needed this functionality and that many Stack Overflow/forum threads were recommending gems like CanCan and Devise. It was a great help for me to see them actually implemented step-by-step into a working app, rather than just hacking away at each one until it worked. smile

  • Registered: 2013-03-17
  • Posts: 1

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

Hi every one,

My suggest is at : http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

I'm really loving it. Although it's simple, this cover all important rails' topics. Another thing is that the tutorial itself could not be more plain and didactic.

#Sorry about my english.

Last edited by caffeine_gonna_kill_u (2013-03-17 15:48:35)

  • Registered: 2013-03-18
  • Posts: 20

Re: Difficulty in learning ruby and rails

I started with multiple ruby tutorials - the 'learn ruby the hard way' and the chris pine book were excellent.  Then I too tried the agile book, it was beyond me.  I heartily recommend the Hartl book, either online or the book itself.  One of the things I love is that he builds the testing from the ground up, he doesn't use scaffolds, that way you're building everything.  Plus, he introduces you to bootstrap which is just awesome