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How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

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Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#71

Post by tptacek »

james-fend wrote: post #68
tptacek wrote: post #49

Congrats on the launch. I think I speak for everyone on HN when I say, you're going about this the right way: learn enough to build applications for yourself, whether or not you're going to be a code committer over the long term. Can I give you some quick advice? Don't take this the wrong way: Rails makes it easy to learn enough to be dangerous in 12 weeks. Some quick hits on obvious things you should look over in yo…

Thank you for this. I will have to look into a few off that list and implement them. All the models does have attr_accessible. Using CarrierWave for uploads.

I think it might be worth your time to double check your attr_accessibles. Just:

  grep attr_accessible app/models/*rb
Everything that comes up on that list, you should be comfortable with users giving any value they want to; that's what attr_accessible (effectively, not literally) means: "I give up any control of how these attributes will be set".

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#72

Post by SkyMarshal »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #54
instakill wrote: post #52

Did you go about this project doing TDD/BDD?

No, sounds like he used PM [1]. 1. http://programming-motherfucker.com/

If I could edit that, I'd add a smiley or something to make it clear I didn't intend to be an ass. Meant that to be funny.

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#73

Post by jwong42 »

Hey James, very inspiring read. I've been following your story and progress on the fastlane forum and glad to see that you had a successful launch! I've also been learning to program myself but my language of choice was python and django for framework. You are right that it takes some time to get through that initial learning curve but once you reach that first stage and figure out how to get past everytime you get stuck, it gets pretty exciting and fun. Congrats and best of luck to you!!

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#74

Post by james-fend »

tptacek wrote: post #71
james-fend wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I will have to look into a few off that list and implement them. All the models does have attr_accessible. Using CarrierWave for uploads.

I think it might be worth your time to double check your attr_accessibles. Just: grep attr_accessible app/models/*rb Everything that comes up on that list, you should be comfortable with users giving any value they want to; that's what attr_accessible (effectively, not literally) means: "I give up any control of how these attributes will be set".

Thank you for that. I shot you an email..

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#76

Post by kaylarose »

randomdata wrote: post #38
mellifluousmind wrote: post #27

As someone with programming background, I actually wish there are more stories on the opposite direction (programmer who gets kickass awesome in UI design (HTML + CSS)). I think that the complexity of CSS compatibility (what browser supports what not... even there are minor quirks between Firefox & Chrome, not just IE.. don't get me started on IE7 & 8 either), it is very easy to raise a white flag and say "that is it…

I sort of built my skills in unison (had an interest in both programming and design since I was a kid), but my career has tended towards the development side, so I guess you could say that I am a programmer by trade that picked up design on the side. Whether or not I am "kickass" is subjective, but people seem generally happy with my work. The biggest challenge I find is that people do not take designer programmers s…

I have the opposite background, but similar anecdotes. Spent all of high school and college in various art or design-focused curriculum and degrees. Inevitably ended up taking a few dev courses, but was only marginally interested. My first job after college was as a web designer in a software shop where I quickly realized that "real-world" programming mixed aesthetics and creativity with logic and really hard problems, was immediately hooked and started absorbing everything (even SICP!) in my quest to become a better developer.

Like yours, my left-brain intuitively sees patterns and (un)readabilty in code, beauty in simplicity, and has empathy for users/novices. My right-brain solves the problems, connects the top to the bottom, and is cold-and-calculating about the inner-workings.

It's also my experience, that if you are design-forward people discount your programming skills (all the more reason to prove them wrong) and if you are development-forward people discount your creative side ("oh, I _totally_ trust your opinion, but just to be on the safe side....").

IMHO Diversity of skills gives you insight into your work and the world around you. Even if you are not a natural you still gain new perspective. Hell, even knowing that you aren't any good is half the battle! I am good at _executing_ other people's ideas, and intuitively knowing what looks good - but struggle coming up with an original _truly unique_ artwork from scratch. On the other hand, Give me an empty vim buffer...

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#78

Post by charliesome »

patrickod wrote: post #58
tptacek wrote: post #49

Congrats on the launch. I think I speak for everyone on HN when I say, you're going about this the right way: learn enough to build applications for yourself, whether or not you're going to be a code committer over the long term. Can I give you some quick advice? Don't take this the wrong way: Rails makes it easy to learn enough to be dangerous in 12 weeks. Some quick hits on obvious things you should look over in yo…

You seem to have a good bit of experience securing rails apps. Are there lessons hard learnt?

No, it's all just common sense really.

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#79

Post by robyates »

GnomeChomsky wrote: post #16

Any advice for getting started for someone without a Mac? I remember once trying to learn and immediately stalling out during setup (lame, I know). I have WinXP & Ubuntu, and would like to take a stab at this again no matter how stupid I feel about not even being to able to install the damn stuff to start with.

Try Wubi (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer). Then you can simply choose between Ubunutu (for Rails development) or Windows (for everything else) during the boot up.

Re: How I Learned Enough Ruby On Rails In 12 Weeks To Launch Freelancify

#80

Post by theDaveB »

I can't get the tryruby.org site to work properly. If I do anything wrong it just locks up and I have to refresh the browser window.

For instance at the "type 2 + 6" question, if I type 2+6 it freezes. If type 2 + 6 it's fine.

Running OSX Lion and Google Chrome.

Dave

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