I am new to Rails. I have done the Rails Tutorial by Hartl
http://www.railstutorial.org/ I have done the Ruby tutorial at
Code Academy http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/ruby , completed the the
Engineering
Berkeley Software as Service
https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx-cs169-1x-engineering-1377course,
done a Coursera course
https://www.coursera.org/course/webapplications,
and read a few basic books (Ruby on Rails 4 Guide
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1491054484/ref=pe_385040_30332190_TE_M3T1_ST1_dp_1
).
First of all, the tutorial by Hartl is excellent. Really helped me get
an
overview. It’s where I should have started my quest, but I started with
the Coursera course which was really a copy-paste exercise. I then did
the
EdX (Berkeley) course which was pretty hard but the Ruby part was good.
I
did not do any pairing in the course and had lots of trouble toward the
end
getting the RSpec testing concepts. I got the certificate but did not
feel
confident to go on to part 2. I then did the Hartl tutorial which
clarified a lot. The ruby course at Code Academy was very good too
(prerequisite for EdX course)
I am stuck on my first app. I find myself re-reading general
documentation
for answers which is getting old. I picked up the Rails 4 Way book but
that looked a bit advanced. I have read so general stuff much that I am
forgetting basics 
- like how to use Ruby.
I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded,
and
do not have a budget for support or training. I posted a question to
stack
overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet. I have
heard of airpair http://www.airpair.com/ but could run up a bill
pretty
fast with $60-90+ per hour.
Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit
a
snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities? I used
elance for a php project once. Result took much longer than promised
and
had lots of mistakes before it was right. I have again begun to wonder
about using contractors from on one of these elance type sites. What
have
you tried when hitting a roadblock or have bigger vision than current
skills?
My friend Darrell Silver runs this company, their approach is that you
pay them by the month a flat fee, and in exchange you get 1-on-1
tutoring and mentoring by an expert.
Personally, especially when learning languages (Ruby, Javascript, etc) I
find Google to be very bad at helping me learn a new language and am a
big fan of O’reilly books. I learned Ruby reading this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177
(On the other hand, there are a lot of good Rails resources available
online.)
(However, I noticed that the book has not been updated for Ruby 2.0,
which is unfortunate because it is an excellent resource)
I strongly recommend you focus on the fundamentals of Ruby before trying
to get too deep into Rails. Some people try to learn both together, and
while this is possible you often find yourself getting stuck on the
syntax of Ruby and that can slow down your learning of Rails.
On Aug 15, 2014, at 4:26 PM, Jason Fleetwood-Boldt
[email protected] wrote:
My friend Darrell Silver runs this company, their approach is that you pay them
by the month a flat fee, and in exchange you get 1-on-1 tutoring and mentoring by
an expert.
I’m so sorry I meant to paste in this URL:
You can either somehow try to find somebody to work with you for
cheaper, or invest
more time in trying to figure things out.
I do 1-on-1 tutoring as well, but my fees are a bit higher than what you
mentioned.
Milan
I am stuck on my first app. I find myself re-reading general documentation
for answers which is getting old. I picked up the Rails 4 Way book but
that looked a bit advanced. I have read so general stuff much that I am
forgetting basics - like how to use Ruby.
Ruby in a Nutshell is a good reference. Refer that book and experiment
in
the irb .
I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded,
and
do not have a budget for support or training. I posted a question to stack
overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet. I have
heard of airpair http://www.airpair.com/ but could run up a bill pretty
fast with $60-90+ per hour.
You need to learn how to solve programming problems. Here is the steps
to
follow:
- Write down your question.
This makes you think and clarify your thoughts.
- Design an experiment to answer that question.
Keep the variables to a minimum so that you can solve the problem
easily. You can then experiment in the irb, rails console or create a
test
case to reproduce the problem.
- Run the experiment to learn.
If you are still not able to solve the problem, you post what you have
done
and what results you are getting to get help on this mailing list.
Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit a
snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities? I used
elance for a php project once. Result took much longer than promised and
had lots of mistakes before it was right. I have again begun to wonder
about using contractors from on one of these elance type sites. What have
you tried when hitting a roadblock or have bigger vision than current
skills?
It’s all about breaking down big problems into smaller problems that you
can solve individually. I personally would never pay anyone for
mentoring.
Having a mentor also helps.
Good luck,
Bala P.
www.rubyplus.com
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Sean K. [email protected]
wrote:
I wonder how to get specific help when you work alone, are self funded, and
do not have a budget for support or training. I posted a question to stack
overflow, but a few days have gone by and not usable answer yet.
And yet you didn’t post that question here, or provide a link to it in
this message? Does that not seem a way to “get specific help”?
Any ideas or general thoughts on getting help with projects when you hit a
snag or want a feature that is beyond your current abilities?
Are there meetup groups or hackathons being held nearby? If not,
maybe you could start one/some and meet potential collaborators.
But personally, I’d start posting questions here 
HTH, and good luck,
Hassan S. ------------------------ [email protected]
twitter: @hassan