It has been a fun month so far. I just wrapped up “Learn Ruby the Hard Way” finishing the two books from “No Degree, No Problem” you read before getting into rails. Next step I’m starting today is “One Month Rails”.
I reviewed the site last night and almost signed up but as its a monthly charge I decided to wait until the start of my study time today. This actually worked out really well because as I was 1/2 though the checkout process then quick on the credit card screen they sent me a coupon in my email for the first month for only $1 instead of the $45 I was about to pay last night.
As for “Learn Ruby the Hard Way” I have to say while I enjoyed the book there are some things that really bothered me.
First off while Zed addresses this issue the code is not written in a way many Rubiest would call normal. It favors python styling of code that while you are still learning Ruby might make your code portfolio questionable by more senior developers. Zed does acknowledge this and even says he should not be your only book and encourages your to look at Ruby coding standards later in the book to start seeing how you should be writing. As well at the time of writing this post Zed is working on the 4th edition of his book that will be rewritten in idiomatic code and “updated content that matches or even better Learn Python the Hard Way”. It will be interesting to review the book once it comes out.
My other issues with the book is there is no mention of Rspec, and favor of sinatra. From the people, code, and meetups i’ve been too and seen. Rspec is primarily used for testing in Ruby. Especially if you want to use some mutation testing gems. Instead Zed focuses on Test::Unit for all the testing and while I’m happy to have started learning to test my code I feel its a weakness in my portfolio to upload this non-standardized code and test to github. As well he pushes Sinatra for making a website. While I find Sinatra very easy to get into and no problems there it’s on of those gems that I feel many looking at the project will go, “This is nice but we don’t have anything here that runs Sinatra, where is your Ruby on Rails projects?”
I still recommend the book has you can view it online for free and it does really break down some hard concepts that I know tripped me up years ago when I was learning to program in C# back in high school. I really hope the 4th edition corrects some of the issues addressed here and it can become a good foundation for not just understanding code but also learning how to properly code in Ruby.
This has been a fun month learning Ruby and I can’t wait to get into Rails starting today! As always thanks for reading, and follow me on twitter for more daily updates and post on my journey from Senior IT Admin to Junior Developer. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.