RoR Is Going Well. Kind Of.

The past couple of days has seen me making a(nother) serious attempt with Ruby on Rails. Like I mentioned before, a vast majority of tutorials are dated, meaning you can learn a little about what you’re doing here and there, but then get stumped half way through because a particular way of doing something has changed. Frustrating.

I signed up to Lynda.com, which is pretty well known for decent tutorials. I think I got through the first 4 chapters of training without any hiccups, even going so far as things finally clicking with me. Before that there hadn’t been much logic attached to why ‘that’ returns ‘this’ and so on, but that was changing, and I was getting really excited about finally getting somewhere.

Unfortunately even this tutorial is dated, which was made apparent when I got to the section on scaffolding, a method which has since changed. I fired off an email to Lynda, telling them (her?) they should seriously consider updating their tutorials considering it’s paid content. While it may not be so bad for someone who’s comfortable enough with the language to figure a way around it, it completely through me – a newbie – off track. They’re response, however, was that they have no current plans for new, up-to-date tutorials.

With all that said and done, why am I actually fixated upon learning Rails? A couple of reasons, both of which are work related. I’d love to revamp the quote system we use across all our sites for customers to obtain quotes and take out cover. Right now we’re using our agent’s effort, which obviously works well enough, but the look is tied into their brand, not ours. I also have an idea for a basic app we could offer with each new let property policy – or to sell individually – which is property related. Aside from that, developing has always intrigued me, and judging by how much fun I’m having getting hands on with Rails, I’d say I’ve definitely found something worth exploring.

Tags: Ruby on Rails

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Work.
Follow Ashley on Twitter.