Having picked up Rails 9 years ago and having been using it literally daily ever since, it's joyful to read from someone that is just starting.<p>I also started with <a href="https://www.railstutorial.org/book" rel="nofollow">https://www.railstutorial.org/book</a>, highly recommend it.<p>I also loved Metaprogramming Ruby (Paolo Perrotta) - it's more advanced and starts to open your mind to how Rails magic DSL's were built.<p>I just bought today "Rebuilding Rails" (<a href="https://rebuilding-rails.com/" rel="nofollow">https://rebuilding-rails.com/</a>), heard great things about it.<p>Ruby and Rails are amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for any other language/framework out there.
Rails is in a really good place.<p>When I learned it back in 2015 there were so many resources for learning, it felt like every time I had a specific problem related to a feature I was implementing there was either a railscasts or gorails video on it, along with 10 blog posts and stack overflow results. I can only imagine how much better it is now.<p>It has been one of the only semi-modern learning experiences where I was able to go from ground zero to building a real application just by reading the docs, getting started guides and Googling.<p>Opinions combined with a massive community are an awesome combo.<p>It's definitely noticeable when you try to learn a newer framework with a much smaller community and less opinions. You could end up Googling for what you might think is a common thing to solve only to find zero answers in sight, or there might be a few scattered posts that are outdated and partially implemented because everyone has their own opinions and go off in their own directions. It's just dead end after dead end and getting stuck trying to pioneer stuff without a strong grasp on how things work.
I hesitate to state that Ruby is making a comeback, because I don't think it ever really faded (isrubydead.com ;-) )…but it definitely feels like the momentum is picking up. 2021 is going to be <i>amazing</i>. Ruby 3. Rails 6.1+ along with new HEY-derived innovations. ViewComponent + StimulusReflex is quickly becoming a powerhouse combo. A ton of useful gems coming out all the time. I myself am furiously working on making Bridgetown one of the world's great static site generators.<p>Honestly, there's never been a better time to be a Rubyist than right now.
I took a rails job by accident- I knew rails was in use but I was interviewed in Go and talked about new things going on in Go micro services. I didn’t expect 40 hours a week of rails / ember JS work and that’s my fault.<p>I have 12 years with Django and I was shocked there wasn’t the equivalent of the Django tutorial. Everyone says the rails tutorial is good and I’m sure it’s worth the money but no one at work endorsed it (nor provided recommendations for any Ruby / rails tutorials).<p>Coming from Python, Go, JS/Typescript (react, vue, etc) in my most recent experiences it was really rough. I couldn’t understand some of the rails magic and the docs were horrible compared to Django. Ruby Mine IDE was essential.<p>I learned how much I love DDL management via code (Django ORM or SQL Alchemy) and how active record did just enough to fool you (which is common in other ORMs).<p>In the end I left the job for a full time Go position and I’ve missed Rspec every day. The rails (or Ruby in general) toolset really impressed me and I’m using Ginkgo at my current job to get my fix for BDD / specs.
> is there a version manager I should be using?<p>> I am familiar with nvm and pyenv for managing Node and Python versions, respectively, however the tutorial I was following did not mention any Ruby version manager. I took to the internet and found the highly popular, rbenv.<p>If you want "just" a version manager for ruby, I'd go with rbenv. But if you use, say, node and python too - I'd go with asdf:<p><a href="https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf</a><p><a href="https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-ruby" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-ruby</a><p>Keeps the stampede of VMs out of your bashrc.
Anyone doing/thinking about Rails in 2020 should give matestack a try :) reactive user interfaces in pure Ruby (and Vue.js under the hood!)<p><a href="https://github.com/matestack/matestack-ui-core" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/matestack/matestack-ui-core</a>
> Blocks are one of the most confusing, yet most powerful elements of Ruby. They allow you to group expressions, save them to a variable, and even pass them to a method. I’m still getting used to blocks and realizing their usefulness, but overall I feel that they condense a lot of code, and also make code more reusable and extensible.<p>Agreed re: confusion! I've been using Ruby (and Crystal) for years and I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that while I fully understand how to _use_ blocks, I haven't really truly grokked them. I kinda use them and use yield and it all works.<p>But! Something clicked recently, and I'm not sure why it took so long (maybe it was lots more experience with JavaScript lately?) and I feel kinda dumb that I just realized this:<p>Blocks are just anonymous functions. That's it. Yield just means "call the anonymous function that was passed in". Yield with arguments (which always confused the hell out of me) is, again, just calling that same anonymous function with arguments.<p>(I think?)
Years ago I put together a Rails app to store iPhone/iPad apps for curation. There was a backend that connected to the iTunes API and then I parsed the data elements I needed and entered them into the DB.<p>The most infuriating thing was realizing that I needed to update the model with a new data element, or that some API responses didn't include the needed data. There was all this controller and model code and then the migrations every time I needed to make a change.<p>Is this normal when coding any web application at all? I think if I had to do it again I'd just store the entire API response in a single "document" column and query it dynamically as needed. Did I stumble upon why many developers have moved to "noSQL" models of document storage?
Now that Rails has StimuluseReflex / ActionCable (which is kind of an additional learning curve), it's got some incredible potential. I was skeptical of WebPacker at first, too, but also have grown to love it.
I recently started learning Ruby on Rails about 3 months ago. I had zero knowledge about any web programming. HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript is all new to me. Using Ubuntu was also foreign to me, but I tried.
I started watching videos on YouTube, especially from Traversy Media. Then I joined a few courses on Udemy. Reading books was painful, so I started actual working on code. I am building app to create a portal, giving information about non-profits. (planning to release my rookie code in AGPL license). Having a project in mind really helps. I really liked the simplicity of Rails' structured way, but there is a lot to learn and it gets overwhelming, but it is fun and I like it. It was also motivating to know that I could learn programming at age 53. Heartfelt Thanks to all those unknown faces on the internet who are selflessly helping others like me learn new things. Now I realized, that you are never too old to learn something new.
Yes, Ruby on Rails is fun.
> For example, take the idea of inheritance. Low level thinking might sound like, “All the other classes are adding < ApplicationController if they want to use this method, so I need to do that too. Otherwise it throws an error.’’<p>> But high level thinking might be more like, “I need to access the ApplicationController class’ methods. Ruby supports inheritance, so I’ll add < ApplicationController to the class definition to let the compiler know that I’m inheriting it.”<p>I don't think this is "high level" vs "low level" thinking. Both are just different approaches to discovering the same thing. It's akin to learning guitar through tabulature vs standard notation.
Is it just me or is Rails really complex? Its abstractions are so far removed from anything familiar (HTTP, SQL) that its difficult to understand what is happening unless you deeply understand the framework.
On an "attitude" level, it's very useful to understand the doctrine of Ruby on Rails (RoR), as written by DHH [1]. Especially if you're coming from some other paradigms / languages etc., RoR can feel quite different. Understanding the philosophy is a nice window to kickstart the "way" of RoR.<p>On a more practical level, I've found the official Ruby on Rails guides [2] to be super helpful. I started a RoR job almost a year ago without having done any Ruby at all (I had a Python background). I probably should have gone through the tutorials in the OP and in other comments (rails tutorial book comes to mind). But since I didn't, I used the RoR guides A LOT. And they were super useful. Everything from routes, to controllers, to ActiveModel and migrations. They give you a good starting point to get most of the job done. Highly recommend looking at the relevant guides if you are working on specific RoR things!<p>1: <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/" rel="nofollow">https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/</a><p>2: <a href="https://guides.rubyonrails.org/" rel="nofollow">https://guides.rubyonrails.org/</a>
I'm a back end C++/rust type and I script with Python.
If I wanted to build a front end, is there any reason I'd use Ruby/Rails over Django? I'm not familiar with Rails but I'm curious if it's worthwhile to pick up.
I wish I'd had this post a couple years ago. I got into my current job by starting as a contractor, helping a friend out in an emergency situation. I've done PHP for over a decade, but had never written Ruby beyond some basic CLI scripts! I spent a few days learning how Rails works, and then how Heroku works (ephemeral filesystems were a new idea to me at the time), and finally got it all together. I also wish I'd put something like this together based on what I went through, but I'm glad this exists for others.
I won't add any value to this thread, just wanted to say thanks to the folks that piled on with additional learning resources. I've always _meant_ to pick up Ruby at some point, and it feels like there's a lot of great information out there to get started.
I am one of those obnoxious people who is trying all the time new web technologies, without deepening the skill for years in just one. Out all the frameworks I have used (Django,Phoenix,Node/Express in all its flavors,.NET Core, Echo) Rails is by far the one in which I feel more productive. Ruby is a lovely language, the ecosystem is mature, there is always a gem for everything and for the kind of applications I do (just 1-3 developers) Rails suits the needs perfectly. All the rest have been very solid and enjoyable frameworks (except for the Node-based ones, sorry) but I still prefer Rails.
>“Rails generates a lot of functions and methods for you that aren’t defined in the code—I bet that will be hard to debug.”<p>This was definitely the biggest obstacle for me learning Rails (and also Ruby at the same time). And also figuring out what part of the language was Ruby, and what part was Rails. Thankfully Rails' docs have come a long way from just OK to being some of the best in the business.
I love rails, but despite its presense for over a decade, it doesn't feel mature.<p>Something as basic as a native left join in ActiveRecord wasn't added until Rails 5.0, on June 30, 2016.<p>Something as basic as native multiple database support wasn't released until Rails 6.0, on August 16, 2019, 15 years after its initial release...<p>These are just two examples.