Programming & Ruby Test Tomorrow May 6, 2008

Make sure you engage your brains with effective studying!  I have found a scientific study that should emphasize my point.

As you can see World of Warcraft can drastically reduce student performance.  (Note that WoW can be replaced by any other non-academic pursuit.)

Ways to study that are better than reading:

1. Writing and condensing notes
2. Creating explanations in your own words
3. Creating sample questions that you think could be on the test
4. Sharing those questions with others (This is studying with a partner, as opposed to reading and then playing GTA on breaks.)

Knee Deep in Ruby April 2, 2008

I think we have a pretty good handle on some programming concepts in gerneral.  Things like strings, integers, variables, methods, etc.  We only need to talk about one more thing before we can start playing around in Ruby.  You need to know what an array is.

And array is basically a collection of things.  You can think of it as a kind of a list  But instead of just a list as a group of words, we have a group of objects.  You can also think of an array as a long row of boxes all in a row.  We can store objects in the boxes.  Kind of like a long row of cubby holes.

 That’s enough talk, let’s get down to business.  Or as hip programmer kids say “Let’s get down to Ruby.”  Once we install Ruby (we only need Ruby at this point, not RubyGems, Rails, etc.) we will follow along with a quick tutorial in Ruby directly from the developer’s website: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/

Why’s Poignant Ruby Guide March 31, 2008

This site:

http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-2.html

offers a very interesting introduction to Ruby.  You are to read chapters 2 and 3 for homework.

First Steps with RUby

Just some quick notes about our Ruby on Rails development:

Ruby – A very clean programming language often used for creating web applications

Rails – A framework for creating web applications that will use Ruby

Aptana Studio – An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for creating Ruby on Rails applications (amongst others.)

RubyGems – Package Installer for Ruby (also can update)

WampServer – RUns a local server on your machine; includes MySQL, Apache, and PHP

“Rails” command – A command that generates a rails framework for a web app

http://localhost:3000 – The default location (IP and port) where the server from Aptana will host the web appl

Welcome to Ruby on Rails March 30, 2008

Welcome to our programming unit. As I have mentioned in class we will be learning how to use the Rails Framework to develop a web application that uses Ruby code. I am using the book “RailsSpace” byHartl and Prochazka as a guide. It is a great book that teaches RubyOnRails (RoR) through the development of a social networking site they call RailsSpace. The book is really well written for experienced and novice programmers alike. Working incrementally on a large project is a great way to learn, and in my experience, far better that a collection of non-related examples to work with. There should be a guide like this for every language.

Since I will be using examples from the book, I will not be posting all the tutorials publicly. But there is not much more in my tutorials that is not in the book. So if you are reading this and want to follow along, just buy the book. It will have many more examples and explanations than I give in my video tutorials anyways.  For my class, you will have private access to the videos.