Until recently I've used PHP for building my web applications. I'm learning Ruby, and the best way I could think of is to contribute to other projects. I set up a GitHub account and followed the excellent tutorials. My problem is that I can't seem to find any entry-level issues that I can contribute anything meaningful to.<p>There are tons of tutorials on how to create a simple blog in Ruby, but I'd much rather give something back to the community while learning. Or should I just buy a book, learn more about Ruby and return when my skills are up to par?
I'm a believer in reading someone else's code to improve your own skills, and in Ruby more than in other languages it's easy to get started.<p>I don't know how much you know right now, but the simplest way I've found ways to contribute is by taking a Rails application, looking through the Gemfile and seeing how complex those are (an easy heuristic to do this is just to take a the number of files that the gem has). Keep in mind that the gems I'm talking about are not the default ones in Rails (most of those will be complicated enough for an experience developer). I'm talking about the stuff you use everyday like Devise, Mustache or Fabrication.<p>If you haven't written any semi-complex applications using Rails you can always find open source Rails or Sinatra projects and see what their dependancies are.
Checkout <a href="https://github.com/hacketyhack/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hacketyhack/</a><p>hackety hack is an intro to programming (and ruby) app. A cpl projects on there - the hackety hack app itself and the website which recently was ported to rails3.<p>Since it was just ported there's a few bugs and more feature requests for the site. Check out <a href="https://github.com/hacketyhack/hackety-hack.com/issues?sort=updated&direction=desc&state=open" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hacketyhack/hackety-hack.com/issues?sort=...</a><p>You can always join the hackety irc channel if you have any questions - #hacketyhack
Here's some projects you could look into <a href="https://github.com/clyfe/cywiky/wiki/Check-source-Rails-projects" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/clyfe/cywiky/wiki/Check-source-Rails-proj...</a>