Learing Ruby and Rails

My main background is as a graphic designer/musician. However, many years ago, 1987, the art department that I was in automated with Macs, Mac IIs and Aldus PageMaker. I was the test subject to see if we could save money - we did. And, long story short I learned how to program starting with HyperCard and HyperTalk. Progressed to Pascal, Object Pascal, Think Pascal, MacApp (Object Pascal then C++) and finally learned C++. Even tried Smalltalk one time and never did learn C. Have even tried Objective-C and Coaca API.

I really loved HyperCard and HyperTalk. HyperTalk was an English scripting, interpreted language. So after a few years of no real programing projects beyond my web sites and a little JavaScript. I'm diving into learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails. With the ultimate goal to take my 500+ pages of www.CurtSheller.com and turn it in to a Rails application. Slicing, dicing, trimming and added as I go along. There is so much cool stuff that Ruby and Rail seem to be able to do. I should be a hoot!!!

I'm using this blog to track my progress and the experience. I found out long ago that using "real" projects to learn something is a great way to actually learn that something. I post problems, issues and tips and tricks that I turn up.

With my hosting provider, MacHighway.com. I have the ability to have Rails applications.

There will not be much to actually show live, online for while. At least until I get a basic shell of an application up and running.

I've done a few of the tutorials from the Ruby books I have and figured it is time to dive right in. A lot of problems and issues to tackle and should be painfully fun.

Simply Rails 2.0 was a good book to do some Ruby on Rails exploration.

I also found the book Rails - Up and Running to be pretty good.

There is also a wealth of online information available for learning.

I have collected a lot of information and have it on my site at: www.CurtSheller.com/programming/ruby/index.shtml