Alright, I’ve done some tinkering and I’ve read through the DHH book.
I’d like to humbly solicit some advice from the rails gurus.
I’d like to get a real firm grip, and it seems that navigating the
actual codebase might be the best course of action.
Any advice as to the best route to take for maximum comprehension? What
would be the most sensible way to tackle the different components?
In addition, what does a ‘day in the life’ of a rails guru look like?
How do you stay current? Do you read the actual commit diffs? The recent
changes? Subscribe to the wiki RSS?
In other words, outside of raw experience, what does the behavioral
transition from ‘novice’ look like?
In other words, outside of raw experience, what does the behavioral
transition from ‘novice’ look like?
Coding applications ? Finding bugs, entering the Rails source code to
find the source of the bug, producing patches. That’s about it, I
guess. I never set myself to read the whole code base - there’s just
too much code in there.
I stay current by being active on the mailing list, following blogs
around the world, and subscribing to the Rails Trac feeds: changesets
and patches.
Honestly, the straight dope is that it takes time, the most important
thing
is to view the process as a journey, everybody starts off in the same
place
not knowing a thing about either Rails or about Ruby, and then goes
from
there to knowing a little bit more each day. My recommendation is to
give
yourself some time to learn, succeed, and totally $#!$ things up, Rails
definitely makes big things happen dramatically but that’s not to say
that
it’s easy or doesn’t take a lot of effort to learn. Rails is built on
the
idea of conventions and there is no way you are going to learn these
conventions without spending time on them, additionally Ruby takes a
long
time to completely grok and if you are coming from a static language
environment, it may confound you with it’s mysteries that will seem as
alien as the arches of Atlantis but slowly over time you’ll be enchanted
by
it’s magic.
Once you get past the initial discomfort you’ll find yourself at the
entrance to a road with a thousand paths and each one of them offers
something to learn about Rails, software development, and the practice
of
programming in general, and by this time you are well on your way down
the
road of Ruby riches only at this point you will not care where you end
up,
only that you can continue with no end, and if you should venture so far
that you come to where the Ruby meets the sea…
Why the poignant will post something on Redhanded.com that will make you
say
WTF?
And you’ll start all over again…
Read AWDWROR
Get Pickaxe and learn Ruby independent of Rails
Do the tutorial
Dream up an app
Start building it.
Get confused
Feel the urge to want to get help
Don’t
Figure out the solution
Feel the urge again to want to get help on something else
Do
Look at the source to learn more about Rails and Ruby
Ask yourself what you know about blocks and metaprogramming
Look around smell the roses and all of sudden realize that you are a
much different developer than when you first started
Ruby takes a long time to completely grok and if you are coming
no end, and if you should venture so far that you come to where the
4) Dream up an app
are a much different developer than when you first started
15) Profit