I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 
To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
I’m learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
Thanks
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Zayd C. [email protected]
wrote:
Thanks
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
I’d say that varies quite a bit by person. All depends on time,
personality, (I hate to use this phrase but) learning style, and most
of all, how much you’re getting into it.
I’ve spent many gleeful 14 hour sessions learning some things that
I’ve never had to revisit, because it stuck. Then again I’ve spent
plenty of torturous 1-2 hour study sessions to make other material
stick. And no, it wasn’t necessarily because it was boring or
non-computer related either.
I’d say plan on taking 30 minute breaks every few hours. If you start
cutting them short because you’re dying to get back to it, spend all
day. When you start taking the whole break, or lengthening it, it’s
time to let it go for a few hours, if not the day!
–Kyle
Zayd C. wrote:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 
I only started using Ruby a couple of months ago and my recommendation
is to experiment to find your own comfortable effort level. When I
first picked up The Ruby P.ming Language (the O’Reilly book) I
found it really readable, and I enjoyed the succinct examples. As a
result I read a little too much of it up front and even though
everything made sense as I read it, I couldn’t remember much of the
detail when it came around to actually writing code.
I think as with learning any language you need a real goal (task) to
achieve. Its a bit tedious to just read and play with language syntax &
idioms just for the heck of it and with a real goal you can read a bit,
code a bit, and discover what you really need to read about next.
The downside to this approach is there are language features that can
greatly simplify your design & code if you know about them so if you
only learn on demand then you do run the risk of missing these. But
that’s not so bad - its happened to me a few times and I just go back
and re-factor things as I learn about new features. You have to accept
that you can’t know everything from the start.
I think it took around a two weeks to get comfortable with Ruby to the
point where I feel I could mostly do what I want without looking up
documentation for every line of code. Now I’m wrestling with RSpec.
Getting familiar with gems & RubyForge, ruby-doc.org, and the “fastri”
gem will help a lot.
I’m learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
That’s a good idea, IMHO.
HTH,
yun
Zayd C. [email protected] writes:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
Quand on aime, on ne compte pas!
Zayd C. wrote:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 
To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
On your own, unpaid, you should cram for days. Behave like videogame
addicts,
with adult diapers, stacks of canned food next to you, etc. The point is
to burn
the techniques into your brain.
On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don’t program. You owe it
to your
velocity to keep fresh for your job!
Phlip wrote:
The point is to burn the techniques into your brain.
On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don’t program. You owe it
to your velocity to keep fresh for your job!
That’s not what Zed says
http://vimeo.com/2723800
Paul F.
Phlip wrote:
Zayd C. wrote:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill.
I’m not a ruby expert, but programming is a lifelong endeavor. There is
no amount of time you can spend, beyond which your task will be “done.”
The more time you spend – really, the more actual problem-solving you
do on your own – the better you’ll get.
On your own, unpaid, you should cram for days.
9-5 developers are universally incompetent. People who don’t code for
fun never get to explore new design styles, nor cutting-edge
technologies. Coding after work is great, specifically because you’re
allowed to fail.
Behave like videogame
addicts, with adult diapers, stacks of canned food next to you, etc. The
point is to burn the techniques into your brain.
That’s a good way to burn out.
On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don’t program. You owe it
to your velocity to keep fresh for your job!
… says someone who frequently posts code on Usenet. Seriously, a
little after-work coding serves as a mental palate-cleanser; a sort of
aperitif for the mind. For me, it’s an important part of keeping fresh.
YMMV.
2009/3/11 Zayd C. [email protected]:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
Now you got six responses already and all are quite different. I think
it totally depends on the person, whether it’s work time or leisure
time, what knowledge you got already, what your learning type is, how
much time you can spare. I do not believe anybody can answer this
honestly from a distance - what works good for some, might not work
for you.
I’m learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
That’s probably a good idea because it will help you understand what’s
going on when you have to loot at Rails source code and the logic has
to be implemented in Ruby anyway.
Kind regards
robert
On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Pascal J. Bourguignon
[email protected] wrote:
Quand on aime, on ne compte pas!
Nous aimes-tu?
Robert
On 12 Mar 2009, at 08:05, Robert K. wrote:
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
Now you got six responses already and all are quite different. I think
it totally depends on the person, whether it’s work time or leisure
time, what knowledge you got already, what your learning type is, how
much time you can spare. I do not believe anybody can answer this
honestly from a distance - what works good for some, might not work
for you.
Probably the best general advice is: code until you get bored and then
stop until you feel interested again. For some of us the former can be
a very long time indeed whilst the latter might be a very brief break,
but this really will depend on how much someone likes bashing their
head against brick walls.
Also never be afraid to put a problem aside for a couple of days and
do something completely unrelated: procrastination is a programmer’s
best friend
I’m learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
That’s probably a good idea because it will help you understand what’s
going on when you have to loot at Rails source code and the logic has
to be implemented in Ruby anyway.
Yep, knowing the language you’re coding in is often much more
important than knowing the framework you’re coding to as it opens up
so many new possibilities for solving problems.
Ellie
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason
Zayd C. wrote:
I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
I’m learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
Thanks
Thanks everyone for your helpful input. I see everybody has they’re on
specific approach to taking the time to learn. I think I will also stick
to learning both ruby and rails, I will spend more of my time
understanding the tool first(Ruby). I have books that I learn from, but
would it be best to start looking at what I want simple projects I want
to do using the Ruby’s libraries to enhance my skills?
Thanks
How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill.
If it is just for fun, 1-2 hours. Not more. And to have fun is very
important.
You will learn slowly anyway. Also ask for feedback - often other people
have solutions which may be better in the long run.
HI. Everyone. Real newbie question with throw & catch.
I am running the book example.
def promptAndGet(prompt)
print prompt
res = readline.chomp
throw :quitRequested if res == “!”
return res
end
catch :quitRequested do
name = promptAndGet("Name: ")
age = promptAndGet("Age: ")
sex = promptAndGet("Sex: ")
…
process information
end
promptAndGet(“Name:”)When I run this and type “!” for every prompt(2)
then I get the following errortemp1.rb:4:in throw': uncaught throwquitRequested’ (NameError)
from temp1.rb:4:in `promptAndGet’
from temp1.rb:19Isn’t catch supposed to run when “!” is ran?
If I don’t put “!” on first prompt, I was expecting the program to end,
but the catch block runs anyway and asks
the Name at the end again.
Name: song
Age: 4
Sex: m
Name:songPlease somebody help me explain how this throw & catch flow
works.
Thank you.
Song C. wrote:
When I run this and type “!” for every prompt(2)
then I get the following errortemp1.rb:4:in throw': uncaught throwquitRequested’ (NameError)
from temp1.rb:4:in `promptAndGet’
from temp1.rb:19Isn’t catch supposed to run when “!” is ran?
If I don’t put “!” on first prompt, I was expecting the program to end,
but the catch block runs anyway and asks
the Name at the end again.
You have an extra call to promptAndGet(“Name:”) at the end, which
appears outside of the catch block. Remove that and it works fine.
Unless you meant to put it there? In which case it needs to be inside
another catch block like the first one.
2009/3/12 Zayd C. [email protected]:
Thanks everyone for your helpful input. I see everybody has they’re on
specific approach to taking the time to learn. I think I will also stick
to learning both ruby and rails, I will spend more of my time
understanding the tool first(Ruby). I have books that I learn from, but
would it be best to start looking at what I want simple projects I want
to do using the Ruby’s libraries to enhance my skills?
Having a project - how small it might be - has always helped me a lot
because this usually provides a good motivation if I can tackle
programming problems that bring real benefit.
OTOH the Ruby Q. is also a good place to start if you don’t have a
problem handy that you want to solve.
Kind regards
robert
I almost feel of topic now since the path seems to have changed. I
liked messing up and doing it all wrong at my own comfort level and then
learning the right way to do things. Trying to cram all of it in
doesn’t make sense because you won’t understand why it’s the right way.
Once you start feeling comfortable with Ruby and with Rails, and I do
mean both, things will start to click as they do with any language and
platform. Then you will start to see why something works and why it is
the best way to go. I say do what you have to do to get the project
done, but whenever something looks like it’s completely missing the
point of rails, take a look around and see how others did it. A great
resource that I still use is Railscasts. It’s a quick and dirty why do
see how many things are done the quick and DRY way.
thanks,
Bassel
www.imustrant.com
To the