About two weeks ago, I decided to start picking up Ruby on Rails (RoR) again. I stumbled upon a getting started tutorial from rubyonrails.org and decided to give it a try.
It is basically a whirlwind tour of RoR by building a (very basic) blogging application. It won’t make you a Rails expert but at least it will give you good idea of what Rails is all about, as explained:
This guide covers getting up and running with Ruby on Rails.
After reading it, you should be familiar with:
- Installing Rails, creating a new Rails application, and connecting your application to a database
- The general layout of a Rails application
- The basic principles of MVC (Model, View Controller) and RESTful design
- How to quickly generate the starting pieces of a Rails application.
I finally finished the tutorial today. The tutorial is quite straightforward, it should take about 6-8 hours to complete. It took me few days as work and home have been really hectic - the only time I can sneaked in time was usually around lunch time.
After finishing this tutorial, I took the opportunity today to set up a Git repository for my files from the tutorial. The repository is hosted on my free Unfuddle account (highly recommended by the way - they have Subversion and Git).
The next step for me will be twofolds:
1. Learning the Ruby language – I will give [Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book](http://humblelittlerubybook.com/) a try this time around.
2. Learning Rails in depth – I have placed a pre-order for [Pragmatic Programmers' Agile Web Development with Rails (4th edition)](http://pragprog.com/titles/rails4/agile-web-development-with-rails)