# Noobie Questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 25, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519 "2006-10-25T01:23:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/1 "2006-10-25T01:23:26Z")
Hi, I am former Visual Basic developer who’s been resting on his laurels for a while. And now finding that in order to work must learn a new technology. RoR looks like a great tool set to learn. And, finally, after many years in a ms environment am excited to work in a clean and fresh environment. Just ordered some Ruby/Rails books - as recommended on various websites. Joined this list (obviously) and prepped my Mac. I’d like to learn by making an app that’s interested me for a while. Possibly spending a couple or more months over it. Has anyone on the list got anything to share about their own experiences of getting to know their way around RoR? Particularly interested to hear about which resources / tools you use, and how you did your learning - working through or dipping into a book. Stuff that was particularly hard to get your head around. Basically looking for tips and things to think about. Thanks! And if there’s an FAQ I should be reading, please point me there. ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 7:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/2 "2006-10-25T07:16:08Z")
Hi Toby, As a long-time Access (and other RDBMS’s that aren’t relevant here) programmer, the most helpful thing I found was the explanation of Object/Relational Mapping on p.17 of the Agile Web D. with Rails book. In fact that whole book gave me a much more grounded feel than the various tutorials I waded through before it. I have the 1st edition; the 2nd edition is due out soon but you can buy the beta in pdf format now. The first edition was riddled with errata and its pragprog errata page became my constant companion for awhile. But among the tutorials, my favorite was Rails4Days, which creates an app of some substance and does give some background explanation but obviously not as much as a book can. The problem with the tutorials in general was that either they are dead simple and you can’t scale up from them or they cover some substantive stuff but it’s all supplied as long tomes of code that you paste into your tutorial app and voila! See how simple! Here are some beginning links I found useful: [Get On Track with Ruby on Rails — SitePoint](http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ruby-on-rails) [http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Instant\_Rails](http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Instant_Rails) (preconfigured stack with Apache and MySQL) [http://trac.radrails.org/trac](http://trac.radrails.org/trac) (Eclipse-based IDE for Rails) [Peak Obsession](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoValidate) [http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Rolling\_With\_Ruby\_On\_Instant\_Rails\_Tutorial](http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Rolling_With_Ruby_On_Instant_Rails_Tutorial) I found more Rails tutorials out there later which may be helpful but I haven’t personally used them. Let’s see what other responses you get from folks who have. Ruby: [http://www.google.com/codesearch/advanced\_code\_search](http://www.google.com/codesearch/advanced_code_search) (new tool from Google that you can use to search for Ruby (or other languages) code on the web) [http://www.rubycentral.com/book/index.html](http://www.rubycentral.com/book/index.html) (Programming Ruby book) [Ruby Programming Language](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) (Ruby home page) [http://www.rubycentral.com/faq/rubyfaqall.html](http://www.rubycentral.com/faq/rubyfaqall.html) You will also have to learn some HTML (easy) and CSS (easy if you’re doing something simple, but can get very complex if you need, say, cross-browser capability or have accessibility issues or specific formatting requirements). [HTML 4.01 Specification](http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/) [Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification](http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/) [CSS Examples](http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_examples.asp) [Style Master CSS Editor for Windows and Mac OS X](http://www.westciv.com/style_master/index.html) (30-day free trial with a REALLY good tutorial) [http://css-discuss.incutio.com/](http://css-discuss.incutio.com/) (CSS issues archive) [Bring on the tables | 456 Berea Street](http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200410/bring_on_the_tables/) [Topics – A List Apart](http://www.alistapart.com/topics/) Hope this helps, Shauna ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 10:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/3 "2006-10-25T10:12:33Z")
Shauna Thanks so much for all that info. “Agile Web D. with Rails” is one of the books on order. I have a PDF version, but find it much, much easier to use a hard copy. Do you use RadRadails? I’ve been playing around with TextMate, but would prefer to use a more enhanced IDE, so am looking at RadRails. Lots of reading to do! cheers Toby ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 10:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/4 "2006-10-25T22:26:42Z")
hi shauna i use radrails for editing and instantrails for the http and mysql server if you like textmate, syntax highlighting and line numbers there is a textmate skin for radrails which do it [http://drnicwilliams.com/2006/08/08/textmate-theme-for-radrails/](http://drnicwilliams.com/2006/08/08/textmate-theme-for-radrails/) On 10/25/06, Shauna [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > numbers so debugging is awfully hard! > unmoor and float most of them, but not the editor (the one window where > have them… > > > – Heri R. [http://sprinj.com](http://sprinj.com) ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 8:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/5 "2006-10-25T20:35:42Z")
I have been using RadRails but only in a limited way, limited for two reasons: 1. I’ve had problems getting its server to run consistently in my environment (Windows 2000 and I don’t know what other details might be relevant, but that alone is different from your setup). 2. Its editor has nice syntax highlighting but it doesn’t include line numbers so debugging is awfully hard! Instead I use a commercial editor (EditPlus) that has almost all the highlighting (it already does CSS and HTML and I set rhtml the same as HTML), and many of the keywords in .rb files are highlighted anyway. I’ve read a lot of recommendations on this list for TextMate for the Mac - just do a Search of this forum for editors on the Mac. I sometimes use RadRails to view a .rb file in a separate window from my editor. A thing that bothers me about an IDE is that the windows are fixed in place (including a tiny browser window). I think in RadRails you can unmoor and float most of them, but not the editor (the one window where you might want to have separate windows for different files you’re editing, say a related set of controller, view and partial). So sometimes I use RadRails to edit the .rb file with its special highlighting and EditPlus for the rest. But keeping them separate gets to be a pain and I revert to just using EditPlus and InstantRails’s console windows. I do use InstantRails and have been happy with that, but it defaults to MySQL which has a few quirks. I suggest you try out RadRails and see if it works for you. It will be awhile before you get to needing the line numbers and by then it might have them… Somewhere on the web I saw that a Mac equivalent of InstantRails is Locomotive. > **[Purchase Intent Data for Enterprise Tech Sales and Marketing | TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/)** > > Identify, influence and engage active buyers in your tech market with TechTarget's purchase intent insight-powered solutions. Activity matters. Happy trails, Shauna ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2006, 12:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/6 "2006-10-26T00:30:55Z")
Hi Toby, Welcome to Rails! As a VB guy, you might find my blog helpful, aimed for people like you and me that used to use VB or C# (or like me, still do for their day job 🙂 Use the Search box at the top to search for topics, because unfortunately we lost our categorization when we moved to a new server last week. I would recommend our series of articles titled “Why Rails” which explains why we as Microsoft developers became enamored with Rails instead. Anyway, For IDEs, RadRails is worth a try, but I also suggest RideMe ([www.projectrideme.com](http://www.projectrideme.com)), or even Scite, which comes with the Ruby one-click installer that you probably already used to get Ruby on your machine. And definitely be familiar with the official Wiki ([http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails)) which can help save you some time, too. Jeff > **[Hey Daddio!](http://www.softiesonrails.com)** > > Home of Hey Daddio Software ---
**Author:** ![toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/9d8465/32.png) [@toby\_privett](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toby_privett)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 11:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/noobie-questions/73519/7 "2006-10-25T23:47:28Z")
RadRails does support line numbers: Window -\> Preferences -\> General -\> Text Editors -\> ‘show line numbers’