Sazima's exactly right. When you're getting your "sea legs", ignore what the cool kids are doing and just learn the basics of the platform. Get yourself a book, install the version of rails it covers, dig in & write an application or two.
Once you've got some experience under your belt you'll know what seems like unnecessary pain to you, and can start to explore the different tweaks and add-ons. That's my plan anyway. ;-) -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sazima Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 8:01 AM To: Ruby on Rails: Talk Subject: [Rails] Re: Overwhelmed with choices concerning Rails "best practices" Hi Wayne, I think you're too anxious. Software development best practices are not so specific to RoR, you can follow well established patterns independent of the language/platform of choice. Regarding new technologies and Rails-specific techniques, I just tend to ignore them if they are not particularly useful/necessary to the project at any given moment. Cheers, Sazima On May 17, 8:45 am, Wayne Molina <[email protected]> wrote: > As someone who has repeatedly tried to sit down and really pick up > Ruby on Rails, the one deterrent I continually find is that the best > way of doing things seem to change on a daily basis, and half the time > nobody can agree with it. Since my programming background is largely > self-taught and without any formal CS education, I like to make a list > of the "right" way to develop applications in a particular language/ > framework so I know that I'm going to be starting off on the right > foot; this is in direct opposition to something like picking up a book > on PHP, say, and cranking out junk sites and learning bad practices. > > In effect my problem is that whenever I sit down to really learn Rails > (and I have almost a dozen books on it I've gathered over the past > year, although a lot are from the prior edition - I have: AWDWR 3rd > Edition, Programming Ruby 2nd edition, The Ruby Way, The Rails Way, > O'Reilly's Learning Rails, Ajax on Rails, Enterprise Rails, Apress > Social Networking Sites with Rails, and RailsSpace) the community > seems to have charged forward and changed its best practices, so it's > just added a whole bunch of things I need to learn as well. > > For instance, the new thing seems to be BDD and RSpec, so I have to > learn RSpec in addition to Rails and Ruby. Git is used for version > control, so that's something else. RJS is out and unobtrusive stuff > is in, so that means jQuery. Hosting is now typically done with > Phusion Passenger, so I have to learn Apache and that. Finally with > the Rails+Merb merger things are going to get shaken up even more so. > I really want to learn Rails but the community seems to just keep > jumping from one bandwagon to another without staying put long enough > for somebody who didn't come aboard in 2005-2006 to ever get to speed. > Like I said I like to follow best practices because I come from .NET > and I've seen what just slapping together code can do, and it's not > pretty, so I feel like if I'm going to learn Rails, I need to learn it > right from the start, not learn the "obsolete" way of writing it and > then upgrade. > > Can somebody knock some sense into me in this regard? I've been > trying to learn Rails for over a year now and this is the main reason > why I can never get more than basic tutorial-style stuff going on. GHC Confidentiality Statement This message and any attached files might contain confidential information protected by federal and state law. The information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) or entities originally named as addressees. The improper disclosure of such information may be subject to civil or criminal penalties. If this message reached you in error, please contact the sender and destroy this message. Disclosing, copying, forwarding, or distributing the information by unauthorized individuals or entities is strictly prohibited by law. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
