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Designer eager to become Developer

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Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#11

Post by mion »

countessa wrote: post #8

A LAMP stack will be easier to deploy simply because pretty much any cheap hosting you get as a playground will support it out of the box. Rails is a little more tricky to deploy. That said, Ruby and Rails is, in my opinion, more fun than an equivalent in PHP (pure opinion though so don't let that colour your experience). I would suggest taking one bite at a time - find the easiest deployment possible for your chosen…

I second that, if you're new to Rails you should definitely check out deployment with Heroku, they made an awesome job making it really smooth and they have great documentation on how to do it. Michael Hartl covers this exceptionally well on this section of his book: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book#se...

Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#12

Post by biscarch »

BenWhit wrote: post #4
biscarch wrote: post #2

Choice of language is pretty much a matter of comfort when you're first learning. The question is, do you want to be using Ruby/Rails or PHP/Wordpress/Codeigniter/etc. If you're just learning, you're going to want to code in whatever language you choose. Just for reference, you can create backends for websites in Clojure, Java, Python, Haskell, go, JavaScript(node.js), etc as well. I'd say use Ruby/Rails if you want…

Thanks for the great reply to start. I clearly am a little over my head and am always looking for the "right direction" to go and end up getting caught up in buzzwords. I only have a few web pages that I need hosted, so frameworks aside...would hosting options such as linode or rackspace be the best option?

Yes.

If you want to get into designer/developer mode for clients you are likely going to have to learn to host your own servers (note: I don't mean physically, I mean services like Rackspace, etc). If they're a couple static (ie: no server-side language) pages that won't get hit very often, you might use github's pages functionality.

I'd go with Rackspace over linode due to the great feedback I've heard about Rackspace, whereas I've heard relatively little about linode. Personally I use Heroku as they have a free tier that helps when just "getting stuff out there". The problem with Heroku is they don't have explicit support for PHP, so that could be an issue for you. If you're going to go after big client work, Amazon Web Services (EC2) familiarity is a nice checkbox to tick.

Remember a server is just a computer. If you can set it up to run on your computer, you can set it up to run on a server.

P.S. Get used to being in over your head. It's the fastest way to get up to speed, just learn how to swim underwater.

Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#13

Post by jfaucett »

BenWhit wrote: post #9
jfaucett wrote: post #6

I'd say the stack to learn depends on what you want. Basically, the best bet for a job anywhere is knowing LAMP plus frontend (which you already can). I think rails/ruby is prolly going to be harder but if thats what you like then go for it :) As far as apache goes if you just want a job as a developer basically all you need to know is mod_rewrite aka regex, and some really basic other stuff like virtualhosts, etc th…

Thanks! That's good to know about Apache. I haven't even had a chance to look into it thoroughly. Maybe I'll dive into it this weekend :) So if I want to get up and running quickly my best bet would be to grab a linode with a LAMP stack?

yep :) I'd suggest getting your linode with the distro you want, then going through one of these tutorials http://library.linode.com/lamp-guides. Also have a look at all the other docs on library.linode.com there really good and you can learn a lot.

Lastly, if you happen to decide to learn PHP instead of Ruby, I'd highly recommend starting out "the right way" with a framework like Symfony2 (http://symfony.com/) or Flow3 (http://flow.typo3.org/) that uses namespaces, good OOP techniques, ORM, and encourages / will teach good programming techniques. Also, have a look at composer (http://getcomposer.org/) - which is the modern PHP equivalent of Ruby Gems.

Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#14

Post by BenWhit »

biscarch wrote: post #12
BenWhit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the great reply to start. I clearly am a little over my head and am always looking for the "right direction" to go and end up getting caught up in buzzwords. I only have a few web pages that I need hosted, so frameworks aside...would hosting options such as linode or rackspace be the best option?

Yes. If you want to get into designer/developer mode for clients you are likely going to have to learn to host your own servers (note: I don't mean physically, I mean services like Rackspace, etc). If they're a couple static (ie: no server-side language) pages that won't get hit very often, you might use github's pages functionality. I'd go with Rackspace over linode due to the great feedback I've heard about Rackspa…

I do want to be able to host my own servers..one day..as for now I think I will "just get this project out there". I think I've got enough Rails under my belt to get the few pages I need up, and Heroku's free-tier seems perfect to learn and practice on.

Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#15

Post by BenWhit »

countessa wrote: post #8

A LAMP stack will be easier to deploy simply because pretty much any cheap hosting you get as a playground will support it out of the box. Rails is a little more tricky to deploy. That said, Ruby and Rails is, in my opinion, more fun than an equivalent in PHP (pure opinion though so don't let that colour your experience). I would suggest taking one bite at a time - find the easiest deployment possible for your chosen…

I definitely am enjoying Heroku's free-tier to test and practice on. And I have gone through a good bit of Michael Hartl's tutorial, at least enough to get up and running. I do like being able see my end result immediately with little setup..for now at least. I'll be sure to check out Webfaction. Thanks!

Re: Designer eager to become Developer

#16

Post by BenWhit »

mion wrote: post #11
countessa wrote: post #8

A LAMP stack will be easier to deploy simply because pretty much any cheap hosting you get as a playground will support it out of the box. Rails is a little more tricky to deploy. That said, Ruby and Rails is, in my opinion, more fun than an equivalent in PHP (pure opinion though so don't let that colour your experience). I would suggest taking one bite at a time - find the easiest deployment possible for your chosen…

I second that, if you're new to Rails you should definitely check out deployment with Heroku, they made an awesome job making it really smooth and they have great documentation on how to do it. Michael Hartl covers this exceptionally well on this section of his book: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book#se...

Definitely a smooth install and setup for Heroku. Michael Hartl's tutorial is great. I've actually been going through it today!
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