[saltcod]

Fantastic post. Thanks so much for it. I decided to really dig into Ruby on Rails after Christmas this year, after thinking/talking about it for years. I was thrilled to hear that you really had no programming background—I think a lot of us are in this boat.

I watched the Lynda.com videos on Ruby, and the one on Ruby on Rails (both from Kevin Skoglund). I just watched enough of both to get fairly overwhelmed and confused, then moved on to Michael Hartl's site. Things started to click much better there—that's the best Rails resource I've seen to date.

Still though, After really digging in over the evenings and two weekends, that nagging feeling started to set in—am I actually going to 'get' this? Am I wasting my time? Is this going to take years? Will I ever get past layouts/partials? Should I just go learn PHP / Javascript / iOS / something else?

Did you feel like giving up? Or question the purpose/wisdom of learning Ruby and Rails?

[danneu]

It eventually clicks.

I started actively teaching myself Rails in Dec 2010 after dabbling with it off and on for years. Went in blindly like most of us do. The uneasiness of the aloofness was eased by the fact that I was learning every day and dangerously productive with what I did know.

Didn't finally grok what REST actually was until last month. It also took me months to finally understand what exactly "mass assignment" meant and what `attr_accessible` is actually protecting against. http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveModel/MassAssignmen...

I feel like every little thing I learn just makes it easier to predict how other things work and gives me more wherewithal to dig in and learn how they work. I also finally started just reading the dang API for once which is incredibly documented compared to what it was many years ago when I first encountered Rails.

Stick with it and actively pursue the things you don't understand. reddit.com/r/ruby, r/rails, stackoverflow, HN comments, and irc.freenode.net's #rubyonrails have been huge helps. In fact, I just started hanging out on #rubyonrails while I'm getting work done. If I don't have a question of my own, I learn even more trying to answer other questions. And I found that #rubyonrails is the best place to ask "why is it this way" because it's too meta for stackoverflow and sometimes all you need is a succinct explanation for something to click.

[james-fend]

Yes, it was the hardest/easiest thing to learn I've ever experienced. Sometimes I was jumping out of my chair and then other times throwing things against the wall.

Plenty of times I wanted to just give up.. during those points; I'd step back and go take a break, go for a walk, do something.. other than think.

Programming is hard because it's full-time blitz mode thinking. I felt the front part of my brain (is that where all the programming juice is held?) hurt often in the beginning.

Do you have an actual product you want to work on?

[joshcrews]

> Do you have an actual product you want to work on?

Having a real product to build, even if its just to help yourself and not the world is key. It gets you out of the tutorials (which you need to do) and into finding out the main problems you have to solve to get something live.

And once you've got something live, you've built your mental framework that you can "hang" everything else you learn on.

[mnoire]

Couldn't agree more. The urge and desire to start learning was constantly squashed by the daunting task at hand. Once my ideas began to coalesce into something coherent, the passion and interest superseded the difficulty or fear I'd never "get it".

[saltcod]

You're 100% right about having something specific to work on. Going through tutorials doen't commit you to anything, and hence never compels you to keep going when things get tough.

The place where I stopped with Michael Hartl's tutorial was on the authentication chapter. I found that whole salt thing completely confusing. Later, I heard about Devise (and others), I thought—Ok, so I'll never actually need to know how to do this—but that's not true. Right on the Github page it says that Devise is complicated and not for beginners. In fact, I'm pretty sure it links back to Michael Hartl's article as an 'easy' way to implement authentication!

That's when I packed it in right there!

Thanks for the advice and for taking the time to write this stuff down. Your freelance site looks amazing for 12 weeks work. Great stuff.

[tmh88j]

I'd like to add to this simply because I had a very similar experience but with PHP.

There were definitely times when I was extremely frustrated and wanted to give up. There were a couple times when I had 5+ hour sessions and got nowhere, then I'd come back the next day to realize it was a stupid mistake.

One thing I can't stress enough (and James has been saying it too), if you don't have a final site, product, or app in mind you're probably going to get bored and walk away for good. I tried to learn C++ a while back and gave up because I didn't have anything in mind and the boring repetitive exercises lead to nothing in the end.

[james-fend]

"then I'd come back the next day to realize it was a stupid" I couldn't agree with that more!! Come back and you find out all you had to do was restart the 'Rails Server' or simply mis-spelled something.

[saltcod]

> Come back and you find out all you had to do was restart the 'Rails Server'

Ha! Hilarious. That's happened so many times.

[eminkel]

I have done the exact same thing as you, saltcod. I have been reading on Ruby on Rails for the past 4 months prior to December. After the new year hit, I told myself that this is the year I fully understand and learn Ruby on Rails to the point of putting out a product. I had started the Rails Tutorial by Michael then stopped, probably from confusion or disinterest. I watched/read many other tutorials that are around.

I have also signed up as of Jan. 11th with a monthly Lynda subscription just to watch the Kevin Skoglund tutorials on there, I have probably 4 hours of tutorials left. I skipped much of the environment setup since I have that down. This tutorial so far has helped me to understand a lot of concepts. I hope to revisit Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial and fully complete it with TDD and all.

If you ever need a kick in the ass shoot me an email.

I will probably do a write up on my experience learning RoR after I get something built. Like the OP, coming from HTML & CSS & Some database background.