Suggestion for New User

I, like many people, am starting to learn Ruby because of Rails. I am
going through several tutorials and am understanding the concepts
without too much difficulty, but the one area I am having trouble with
is learning the new language.

I am not a trained programmer. Rather, I learned how to program out of
necessity and therefore lack some of the background that many of you
have.

I am looking for a suggestion - would it be better for me to learn Ruby
before I jump into the framework? Or, should it be sufficient for me to
just learn the framework.

Your advice is appreciated.

On 30-Dec-05, at 3:18 PM, Mark D. wrote:

I am looking for a suggestion - would it be better for me to learn
Ruby
before I jump into the framework? Or, should it be sufficient for
me to
just learn the framework.

Since Rails is built on Ruby, I strongly suggest you learn Ruby
first. You can get your self a copy of the Pickaxe book online. I
dont remember what it costs.

You should also get a brief understanding of MVC. I see a lot of
people messing things up only cause they dont get MVC.

Get a copy of “Aglie Web D.” and read the docs on the
wiki.rubyonrails.com and manuals.rubyonrails.com

If you need extra help or support you can speak to other rails
developers on #removed_email_address@domain.invalid.

Final tip join the Rails mailing list. =)

Best Regards,
Warren N…
GNU (http://www.gnu.org.in)

Mark,

Not knowing what you know this is what I think.

Ruby, IMHO, is a very versatile language like perl, with a very broad
.scope
of application. The Rails frame work, is setup according to a certain
software architecture model, called MVC. And is for software development
(Agile in this case)

MVC → Model–view–controller - Wikipedia
Agile → Agile software development - Wikipedia

Related to application development it can be very usefull to now about
commercial business processes. Then there’s data(base) modeling
(normalization), which can be a study by itself, etc.

Here’s a usefull link full of articles on Rails:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/UnderstandingRails

I’d suggest you dig in to some articles, and see if you feel like you
need to
know more about the previously mentioned terms. You can always take a
detour
before getting back on the rails.

Regards,

Gerard

On Saturday 31 December 2005 00:18, Mark D. tried to type something
like:

before I jump into the framework? Or, should it be sufficient for me to
just learn the framework.

Your advice is appreciated.


“Who cares if it doesn’t do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process …”

My $Grtz =~ Gerard;
~
:wq!

Thank you for the replies so far. I have gotten just so far in learning
Rails (I have the Agile Web D. book and am working my way
through depot), but I tend to have a large learning curve when it comes
to the vernacular of a specific language. I know that with time I will
‘get it’, but I am starting to question whether or not it is worth the
effort.

Please, do not label me as a blasphemer, but as someone who is very
familiar with PHP (although frustrated with some elements of it), is
there any practical reason to not move to an application like PHP Cake
(which is modeled after rails)?

I am trying to be honest here - I don’t want to spend a great deal of my
time learning a new language when there is a perfectly acceptable
alternative out there.

Again, thanks for your responses thus far. I know this isn’t similar to
most of the posts here, but after two full days of going through the
material, I am starting to see the journey ahead of me…

Mark D. wrote:

(which is modeled after rails)?

I am trying to be honest here - I don’t want to spend a great deal of my
time learning a new language when there is a perfectly acceptable
alternative out there.

Again, thanks for your responses thus far. I know this isn’t similar to
most of the posts here, but after two full days of going through the
material, I am starting to see the journey ahead of me…

Thought I’d just weigh in here… The journey really isn’t that long.
It might appear so at first, because until you get the hang of what’s
Ruby and what’s Rails, just knowing where to look stuff up is an issue.
I say this from personal experience - I came in from PHP too, although
I had a fair amount of Java and C under my belt before that, and until I
had the separation of framework and language clear in my head, some of
the simple stuff was quite hard work.

As far as I’m concerned, the gains from dropping PHP as a whole have
outweighed just changing the framework I used. I learnt Ruby by diving
into Rails, and just weathering it. I say stick with it. Also, I’d
recommend consciously finding excuses for finding out more about how
things work in Ruby, ActiveRecord, and Rails in general - one of my
earliest Ruby projects (after trying out a few example apps) was a data
migration and validation system for importing data to an existing PHP
application using ActiveRecord. Very simple stuff, and I probably could
have shaved 20% of the time off by doing it in PHP (in an environment I
was previously familiar with), but it taught me a lot about both the
language and the viewpoint that it brings with it.

In short, ditch PHP. You won’t regret it :slight_smile:

if u wanna get into a bit of ruby i suggest that u make this one of
your first stops…

http://tryruby.hobix.com/

after that just jump into RoR… learn as you go…

On Dec 30, 2005, at 7:15 PM, Mark D. wrote:

Please, do not label me as a blasphemer, but as someone who is very
familiar with PHP (although frustrated with some elements of it), is
there any practical reason to not move to an application like PHP Cake
(which is modeled after rails)?

We tend to be pretty tolerant of blasphemy as long as it’s rational
discourse. Foaming-at-the-mouth zealotry is frowned upon :slight_smile:

To answer your question, it really depends on what your ultimate goal
is. If you just need to get something done and get it done quickly,
then by all means go with what you know. If you’re willing to put in
a little extra effort in the short term, it’ll pay off down the road.
Ruby is worth it.

I am trying to be honest here - I don’t want to spend a great deal
of my
time learning a new language when there is a perfectly acceptable
alternative out there.

That may be your answer right there. If all you need is “acceptable”,
then PHP will work fine for you. On the other hand, you’re looking for
“beautiful” or “fun”, you might want to stick it out and learn Ruby.
And I would definitely learn as much Ruby as I could before I tried to
learn Rails. Rails is what it is because of Ruby.

-dudley