Rails: Some New User Advice
Posted on January 26, 2007
Filed Under /dev/ruby | 208 views |
It’s been about a month into learning Ruby and Rails now I’ve stumbled across a number of things I think might be good advice for other beginners. In the intrists of altruism, here they are:
- Create a Hello World app first, without worrying about doing anything with the database
- After the Hello World is done and before you start on your masterpiece, read everything you can about ActiveRecord Migrations. Everything. Understand them completely. And then use them to create everything for your database. Manually creating the database first and then going back to match up your migrations later might seem speedy, but it’s really a bit of a pain in the ass.
- If what you’re doing seems hard, requires a lot of code in the VIew or the Controller, you’re probably doing it the hard way. There’s likely another more efficient ‘Rails’ way to do it instead
- Use TextMate as your editor on OS X. Learn the shortcuts in the Rails and Ruby bundles. Then learn how to create your own macros and use them. If Rails is the crack cocaine of web development, TextMate is the Columbian drug cartel
- Ruby/Rails books are really quite good, at least the ones I’ve bought so far. I’ve particularly enjoyed O’Reilly’s Ruby Cookbook (with a section on Rails) and The Pragmatic Programmers Agile Web Development with Rails. The newest edition of the Agile book covers Rails 1.2 but when I was looking for it, it wasn’t yet available in Canada (at least in Vancouver) so I picked it up in LA. Make sure you get the second edition, covering Rails 1.2
And a few links to helpful blogs worth dumping into your RSS reader:
- Jamis Buck’s ‘the {buckblogs :here}’ - extremely educational
- The Rails Way - this one is fantasticly educational as well
- Ruby on Rails Blog
- Riding Rails - from the official Rails site. Mainly good for new product and version releases, etc.
Comments
Leave a Reply