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Ruby

Why is there such a big gap between Ruby an RoR here?

Okay, so I follow the Rails track. Which was really good. Thorough, detailed and explained well. I really got a good understanding of Ruby.

So, next I switched to the Ruby on Rails track. Which takes you to some basic other stuff first like How to make a website, learn Git, etc. ( which I had already done in other tracks). Then, when you finally get to the RoR part, you start installing RoR, so far so good. But then you take the next step and go about building a Rails app which is a todo list. Suddenly, it feels like you need to have a thorough understanding of RoR already before reaching this stage. Nothing is explained about how RoR works or the basic syntax of it. It's just setting up some test environment with rSpec and Capybara, which isn't explained much neither.

I really feel like there is a big step missing in between those courses / tracks. There should be a RoR basics course or something in there. Even if it's just a short one cause it might be very similar to Ruby itself. But, now, it just feels like something is missing.

Anyone else had this experience? Or maybe @jasonseifer himself might shine his light on this? By the way, I loved your Ruby track. That was really good. :)

4 Answers

William Li
PLUS
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,868 Points

Hi, Elian Kloppenburg

Anyone else had this experience?

You're not alone, other students posted similar complaints on the forum from time to time. Frankly speaking, if you're jumping into Rails track without any prior back-end development experience, there's no way you are not getting totally lost in the building a todo app rails course. The course is not meant to be a gentle instruction to Rails basics. It's more like you follow along with the instructor and do what he does during lecture in order to get a feel about the flow of developing site using RoR, very little explanation on the Rails' terminology was thrown along the way.

If you check out Treehouse's Ruby/Rails library, we've some wonderful courses on the subject, many of 'em not included on the Ruby/Rails track, but sadly, there's not (at least not yet) a course that can replace the building a todo app, the only possible alternative is Build a simple Ruby on Rails Application, it's a great course, but it's quite dated as it was created using Rails v 3.x I believe.

RoR basics course or something in there. Even if it's just a short one cause it might be very similar to Ruby itself. But, now, it just feels like something is missing.

Currently Treehouse does not yet have the course to fill in the gap. But I'd like to ask you to check out this book Learn Ruby on Rails: Book One,, it's a book not a video course, but as far as its content is concerned, this book fits the bill, it bridges the knowledge gaps for developers who are jumping from Ruby to RoR, everything from Gemfile, to MVC, to deployment were explained in an easy-to-understand manner, this book will give you a rock solid foundation to take on the more advanced Rails learning materials.

Hope it helps. Happy coding.

Thanks for the book tip! I will definitely look into that!

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points

I agree Elian, the RoR section is rough, and unfortunately Jason no longer works at Treehouse, so as far as I know, the ship doesn't have a captain. Which I really really really want it to be updated.

I have found a phenomenal beginner entry book/tutorial. It will probably take 3-5 days to get through. But the author explains every tiny little step, and has made the online version free. I highly recommend this: https://www.railstutorial.org/book

Too bad, Jason is a good teacher. I will look into the book! Thanks!

I felt exactly like the author of this discussion when I switched from the Ruby Basics course to the RoR course, so I hope Treehouse can at some point do a tutorial to close that gap, as I feel that there is one (I have no programming knowledge besides the one I learned along the track though).

Thanks for the book suggestions, that will hopefully help get going.

Good to see someone feels the same way :) Thanks for the advice :)