May 17, 2013

A Dad has_many roles

As Dads, we have many responsibilities and shoulder many stressful things.  We often shield our families from these stresses and concerns because we feel that it is our duty.  We want the best for our families and want them to always feel safe and happy.  Dads play many roles and are seen in a different light according to each member of their family.

 

  • A strong superhero who can lift anything (and kill scary bugs)
  • A smart and handy guy who can fix almost anything
  • A great provider who keeps the family safe
  • The navigator and course charter on family road trips
  • The great protector who investigates scary noises at night
  • A loving comforter who can ward off scary dreams with a bedtime prayer

 

For those dads on a journey to learn new things, such as programming, so that they can make a career jump, maintaining all of these roles can be very difficult.  We must balance our family time with the time we spend in front of our computers.  We can very easily make the argument that having time to learn is extremely important, for the good of the family.  The truth is, in my opinion, nothing is more important to the family, than spending time with the family and creating great lasting memories. We can all adjust our schedules and commitments so that we have time with our family.  We can get up a little earlier or even stay up a little later to accomplish our learning goals.  We can always make up for lost hours of sleep, but we can never make up for lost hours with our family.

 

Being a dad is a very special and rewarding job.  I only hope that I am doing the best I can to instill great values in my children, so that they might pass them on to my grandchildren.

Filed Under: Blog, Family, Learning Tagged With: , , 4 Comments
April 3, 2013

Open Source Rails Projects

I recently found a website called www.opensourcerails.com which is a really great site.  The reason I like this site so much is that it allows you to get a really cool and useful app running quickly.  Sometimes when you are learning ruby on rails, you just really want to get something up and running to give you a boost.  Once you see an app running, you can make some changes under the hood and see how those changes affect the end product.  I personally enjoy learning this way because it can help you understand something that you may not get from reading a tutorial.

Some of the projects that I have tried so far and liked where:

refinery

Kandan

Selfstarter

  Each of these projects are easy to get up and running, simply clone the repo, bundle and fire up the rails server. The documentation for these projects is really good, so give some of them a try and let me know which ones you like.

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Filed Under: Learning, Ruby on Rails Tagged With: , , , , , Leave a Comment
August 23, 2012

Tools I’m using to learn ruby on rails

There are many resources out there that teach Ruby on Rails. I have been fortunate enough to have some awesome friends in my community who are rails developers. They have shared some great tools with me, so I want to pass them along.

I will list both free and subscription based sites, I recommend that you use a combination of both. The subscriptions I have used range from $9 per month to $25 per month and I am happy to pay the price for such great content.

Treehouse www.teamtreehouse.com Subscription $25 Silver Plan and $49 Gold Plan

Code School www.codeschool.com Subscription $25

Try Ruby www.tryruby.org great FREE interactive site from Code School

Peep Code www.peepcode.com offers screencasts in various packages 5-pack $55  10-pack $99 and UNLIMITED for $199

Railscasts www.railscasts.com has some free video tutorials, but I recommend upgrading to a Pro account for just $9 per month.

This should give you a great variety of teaching styles, so check them out and see what works for you.

Have a question? email me at dennis@thecommongeek.com 

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Filed Under: Learning, Ruby on Rails Tagged With: , , , 2 Comments
August 4, 2012

How I’m Learning Ruby on Rails

Ever since I saw “War Games” back when I was a kid, I have been fascinated by computers. For years, I have wanted to learn to program, but was overwhelmed by all of the languages and just really not knowing where to start.

Several months ago, I met a group of people locally that blew me away with their talent and passion to help others learn. These talented people are Rails Developers and I was quickly drawn into the concept of learning to program with Rails. My goal is to eventually break away from my day job and do work that I find both fascinating and rewarding.

It was recommended to me to start with Treehouse, a website full of great video tutorials. I immediately signed up and began working through the topics, then completing a short quiz at the end of each section. The videos are usually 10 minutes or less and are very easy to understand. In all, there are around 600 videos available to you with a monthly subscription. This was a great start for me and gave me a basic understanding of the Ruby programming language.

Once I completed all of the sections I wanted, I moved on to Try Ruby which is a great site that walks you through exercises in real-time.  I was encouraged to learn the fundamentals  of Ruby before moving on to Rails so that I would later be able to diagnose issues in my code more easily. Next, I moved on to the great tutorials at Jumpstart Lab  which walks you through the installation of everything you need to get up and running with Ruby and Rails. I started with Ruby in 100 Minutes which was great. I am currently working on the “Blogger” tutorial, which takes some time, but is a great tutorial. One thing I have learned is that you need to be patient and work through any issues that you encounter. Most issues I have had, have just been a simple typo or forgetting to place “end” enough times in the code. Learning has been very rewarding and I can’t wait until I am advanced enough to be able to review code for others and help them along the way.

 

What resources have you tried? Feel free share any experiences you have had with learning Ruby and Rails.

Have a question? email dennis@thecommongeek.com

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Filed Under: Learning, Ruby on Rails 4 Comments
April 10, 2012

My New Favorite Website

Anyone who knows me, knows I love to learn about technology. I have done my own research online for several years, watching videos, listening to podcasts and reading how-to guides. I have worked through things learning as I go and teaching myself from the bits and pieces of info I picked up from various sources.

What I really want to learn right now is how to program with Ruby. I have watched videos and read blogs claiming to teach you in record time, but none of these actually started from the very beginning and explained everything clearly. Recently, a friend told me about Treehouse, an online tutorial website that has so far blown every other tutorial website out of the water in my opinion! The cost is $25 per month, but well worth it! You will get access to over 500 great video tutorials. The videos are setup in short easy to digest modules, usually 5-10 minutes long.

I started with the basic HTML videos and learned some new things within the first few videos, things that had never been explained thoroughly to me before. I am eager to get to the more difficult modules, but decided just to start from the beginning so that I will have a better understanding of every aspect of programming. So, if you want to learn from an amazing team of people, I highly recommend Treehouse.

Do you have a favorite tutorial website? We would love to hear about it and check it out, please share it in the comments. Thanks!

Have a question? email me at dennis@thecommongeek.com

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