Hard to believe that I started this blog almost a year ago to share my new found knowledge of Python.  Wow have things morphed.  I still use Python for geoprocessing in ArcGIS but I have really immersed myself in Ruby on Rails.  I have been learning and studying and learning anything and everything that I can about RoR.  There is so much info out there for learning both Ruby and Rails.  I have tried to watch just about all of the Railscasts.com Rails tutorials that Ryan Bates puts out there for free.  I have read other tutorials and found other screencasts as well.  If anybody ever says that there is not enough info on Ruby and Rails, well then they never heard of Google.

I know I have touched on this before but I am so impressed with the Ruby and Rails community.  I can't even count how many people have offered to help and/or helped me on my Quest to be a Rails pro.  My advice to new users or those looking to learn; find a local user group.  They are everywhere.  Look for co-working places in the cities where you live, that is where the programmers live.  A lot of places will have open hack nights where programmers new and experienced can go to work together or to get help and advice.  Other than that, read everything and just start coding.

Shortly after I started "to get Rails" I found myself in a tutorial rut.  Too many "to do" or mini blogs, etc and I had to do something new.  A friend that I met at Ruby::AZ our local Ruby/Rails group gave me a real old app that he started on Rails v1 something.  I had the code to look at and a half running app to see what he had done.  As it was way too old version of Rails, I had to build it from the ground up.  I learned more doing this than any tutorial taught me.  It is easy following the steps in a tutorial but a lot harder to see what is is that you want to build, and then building it.

I am still doing little things on the side and do not a "live" app of my own up but there are a couple of apps that I am working on.  In the meantime, I try to learn as much HTML and CSS as possible as well as JS and jQuery which is now installed by default in Rails 3.1.0.

I am planning on doing some pair programming soon and striving the become that Rails "Ninja"