Transitioning from Front-End to a Rails Dev, what should I expect?

#1

Post by BenWhit » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

I've been doing front-end coding for a few years now but recently have been trying to teach myself Ruby on Rails on the side. I have already gone through a few resources…all the Codecademy lessons for Ruby, CodeSchools “Try Ruby” and “Ruby Bits” series, “Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book” to learn the basics of Ruby. And now I’m just getting to the tip of the iceberg with Rails. I’m currently working through M. Hartl’s popular “Rails Tutorial” and the most recent edition of “Agile Development with Rails”.

I’m hoping to transition to a Junior Rails developer role but am not sure of what general knowledge I need to have or what I should expect when applying to these positions. Because I’m familiar with some aspects of web development, should I be able to land a job more easily with my front-end experience and learn the ropes from my future employer or would I benefit more from buckling down for a few months and learn the inner-workings of the framework?

Transitioning from Front-End to a Rails Dev, what should I expect?
benjammin.herokuapp.com

Re: Transitioning from Front-End to a Rails Dev, what should I expect?

#2

Post by BenWhit » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

Ask HN would have been a much better place for this post. I hadn't realized that if you include a link, hn automatically directs you there. I'll re-post in Ask so comments are easier to make.

Re: Transitioning from Front-End to a Rails Dev, what should I expect?

#3

Post by charliepark » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:47 PM UTC

If your current plan is working well, and Rails is making sense to you, then fantastic. I often encourage front-end devs getting into back-end Ruby to first go through Sinatra. Building a very simple tool (shopping list, address book, etc.) in Sinatra and then replicating it in Rails will give you a good sense of how they're alike and how they're different. And because Sinatra is so much less "black box-y", you'll have a better sense of how the code is working.

Re: Transitioning from Front-End to a Rails Dev, what should I expect?

#4

Post by BenWhit » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

charliepark wrote: post #3

If your current plan is working well, and Rails is making sense to you, then fantastic. I often encourage front-end devs getting into back-end Ruby to first go through Sinatra. Building a very simple tool (shopping list, address book, etc.) in Sinatra and then replicating it in Rails will give you a good sense of how they're alike and how they're different. And because Sinatra is so much less "black box-y", you'll ha…

Thanks for the tip. I often get wrapped-up in the buzzwords then end up splitting my attention between a million different areas that I forget to build up the basics or start small. Sinatra looks like a good gateway to understanding the 'magic' behind Rails.