We have a 3-day Ruby on Rails Course w Ian Hunter at Coloft on Nov 15, 16, 17, check it out!
I spent last thanksgiving break learning Ruby on Rails using Team Treehouse, and spent December building my first Ruby on Rails app. I’ve been coding on and off for a bit, so it was rather quick for me to pick up. However, getting past building a basic app is where I got stuck.
I could keep learning on Team Treehouse, since they’ve extended their Rails Course since I went through it. That being said, I still need the motivation to do it. It’s hard to get back to learning something once you’ve lost steam. So I looked around for good places to learn/practice coding.
Gathering Places
I’ve either attended or heard good things about the following:
- Carbon Five’s bi-weekly hack night (Meetup) - Santa Monica
- Pivotal Labs’ Pair Exchange/Extreme Roundtable (Meetup) - Santa Monica
- CRASH Space’s weekly “Learn to Code With Us” - Culver City
- Los Angeles Hack Night - occasional hack nights and hackathons (Meetup) - Various Locations
- Hacker Zazen’s monthly gatherings (Meetup) - Santa Monica
- The Rubyists’ weekly Ruby Study Group - Pasadena
Although this isn’t an event focused on hacking, you can also take advantage of:
- Free Coworking Day w CoworkLA (Meetup) - Various Coworking Spaces
Online Resources
If you’re new to programming or Ruby, start with Codeschool’s Try Ruby Course. It’s free, takes only 15 minutes, and it introduces you to the basic syntax (how the language works). If that itsn’t enough for you, dive further into Ruby Syntax with Codecademy’s Ruby Course.
If you’re new to MVC architecture, or don’t know what that means, you should take Codeschool’s Rails for Zombie’s Redux. It’s also free. It might confuse you a little, but power through it. You’ll start understanding it once you start coding.
Once you’ve kinda learned the concepts, I think it’s time to build, which is the best way to learn. For that reason, I think Team Treehouse’s Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application Course is the best because they walk you step-by-step through building an app, from installing a text-editor to making the app go live on the website.
Alternative to what I mentioned above, you can enroll in Mattan’s $99 One Month Rails Course. It was one of the most successful Skillshare courses that turned into a Y Combinator backed company. I’ve heard good things about the course.
In-Person Courses
There are definitely benefits to in-person courses. Having someone walk you step-by-step through a build is, I think, one of the quickest ways to learn a language.
If you’re new to coding, and committed to becoming a developer, your should take a look at General Assembly’s web development courses. It’s a little bit pricey, but follows a curriculum developed by instructional designers over the course of weeks.
If you’re an existing developer, there is a 3-day course on Ruby + Rails w Ian Hunter, CTO of Zaarly, coming up in November. He taught a course at Coloft before, and many of them are active Rails developers in the community today, one of them a CTO at a well-funded company that runs on Rails.
- Coloft Academy’s Learn Ruby + Rails the Hard and Fast Way ($799-$999) - Nov 2013
- General Assembly’s Web Development Immersive ($11,500) - Dec 2014
- General Assembly’s Back-End Web Development Course ($3500) - Jan 2014
If you’re interested in learning more about the Ruby on Rails community in Los Angeles, check out General Assembly’s Introduction to the Ruby on Rails Community on Oct 30th.
