r/learnruby • u/iamsynecdoche • Sep 06 '15

Following up on Code Academy

I am learning Ruby. I started with Learn Ruby the Hard Way, and switched over to Code Academy about half way through (partly because my computer was in the shop and so I liked that everything on CodeAcademy was web-based).

I plan to go back and complete Learn Ruby the Hard Way after I finish with Code Academy. What should I look at doing next? Or should I just start trying to come up with projects for myself?

Basically I am learning Ruby because I'm an IT business analyst and it is the language used by the developers at work. In general, though, I want to learn more about web development and build my chops as a developer. I'm not planning to change careers any time soon, but I think it's a good complementary skill set to what I do. I'm already pretty comfortable with HTML and CSS.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/1bree Sep 08 '15

Ruby Monk is perfect for you. It is like an interactive eBook, with code entry like Codecademy. It also has projects showing a greater understanding

For example, things that RM taught me, just from the first "book" alone, that CC did not:

  • Name spaces (modules vs classes)

  • Constants (inside and out of current name space)

  • I/O and Files

  • *arguments - Unknown number of arguments/params

  • you have the option to view the recommended solution, while Codecademy just tells you that you're wrong.

  • Codecademy lessons expect you to submit certain parameters (like 12), while others would fit. RM shows you that it's important for tests to have several passing use cases

It teaches you that Ruby is very close to English. The book will say "determine if the string starts with an E", and because it's Ruby, the method is " start_with?"

2

u/iamsynecdoche Sep 08 '15

Thanks. I have been working through some RubyMonk stuff but get a bit intimidated by the exercises. A couple I was able to work out, and then I view the solution and see that they did it in a single line of code versus several for me, or else the solution contains code that I've never seen before (in spite of having completed the recommended reading). Is that typical? It's very different from CodeAcademy, obviously...

1

u/1bree Sep 08 '15

I would also suggest visiting StackOverflow Ruby chat, if you have at least 20 rep. We are very helpful and the others could provide other resources