Stefan Goodchild

Ellipsis Copy Logo

Logo and website for a copywriting firm.

Ruby On Rails – Missing Link?

I’ve finally been kicked up the arse and started to learn Ruby On Rails in anger and finding it really refreshing but frustrating in equal measure. Refreshing because there is so much just taken care of for you in terms of programming, but frustrating because it’s a total mind shift in terms of fitting in with the framework and researching existing solutions instead of solving the problems myself.

Looking around there are an amazing amount of “Getting Started” tutorials but not much more really. There is a huge chasm between these (usually very simple) tutorials and the documentation for Gems such as Clearance. There are a few excellent screencasts that have helped from Peepcode but somehow I always feel like they are aimed too low or too high for someone who learns like I do.

So how does one bridge that gap? I’ve looked at books - and there are loads of great RoR tomes - but my brain just doesn’t absorb information in that way, I have to actually be doing something - for real - for it to sink in for some reason. Personally I’ve taken to wandering around GitHub and downloading templates and other project templates and piecing together how it all fits together myself but given how many coding styles exist even in the tightly controlled world of RoR it can create more confusion sometimes.