A Daniel Gillespie Tale

From n00b to ninja: Pause for the cause

12 weeks to learn Ruby on Rails was a challenge I was highly motivated to achieve.

I had all the learning materials needed, I had all the mentorship I could ask for. One thing I do not have currently is time.

With my final exams of my undergrad degree literally weeks away, I have decided to pause my journey into Ruby, and focus on getting the best grades possible.

So this is a bye for now Ruby, I will see you again in June…

From n00b to ninja: Wk 3/8

Wow, gross over-estimation on my part.

I had thought it would take me a couple days to plough through Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Instead it took me a week and a bit.

The book is comprehensive and challenging, starting off with basic syntax right through to the use of gems, testing and the Sinatra framework. I often had to refer to TestHead’s LRTHW walk through to help me quickly understand some of the exercises.

It has certainly been a difficult journey so far, and I’m frustrated that my progress feels slow. I really just want to start building things, but I know it’s important to have a solid foundation.

I hope my mood will lift over the rest of the week and weekend when I start my rails education and begin implementing some of these OO concepts I have learned into tangible projects.

From n00b to ninja: Wk 2/8

Admittedly this was a slow week due to a barrage of coursework deadlines.

I managed to further my learning of Ruby, going through why’s (poignant) guide to ruby (which I found quite abstract and rambling at times) and finishing off Chris Pine’s Learn to Program.

This week I had intended to go through some foundation Rails exercises, such as Rails for Zombies, but think it might be best to solidify my Ruby knowledge first by working through Learn Ruby The Hard Way.

From n00b to ninja: Wk 1/8

My objective for the week was simple: To gain a broad over view of the Ruby language.

To do this, I jumped right into Try Ruby and Ruby Monk - two very cool resources that let you code within the browser.

Next I went onto The New Boston youtube channel and watched a back to back marathon of Ruby Programming videos.

I finished off the week with Chris Pine’s “Learn to Program”.

The concepts are starting to set in my mind and executing file through the Command Line is cool (never done that before in PHP).

More Ruby next week :)