[kohanz]

I was in your shoes about 6 months ago (experienced non-web developer, looking to expand my skill-set) and went with Rails. I took the Michael Hartl tutorial (highly recommend it), viewed some Railscasts and haven't looked back. I'm hoping to do a Show HN with my first side project rather shortly (I realize 6 months is a long time, but with a family and a job, I'm happy if I get 5 hours a week to work on it).

If I had to do it again, I wouldn't change my choice of technology. You can debate forever which technology is "best", but one cannot debate that the support system for learning Rails is tremendous.

[scubasteve]

Thanks for the response! I think one of the best lines of advice I've seen online was on Quora: "The language and technologies you learn are not the most important bit when it comes to becoming a programmer. When friends ask me whether they should learn Ruby or Python I respond by asking "Which language do more of your friends know?"" I think that's what keeps bringing me back to Rails, the support around it. I have the same problem as you, trying to find more than 5 hours a week to stick to reading Hartl's book. I think now that I have more time I'll try and go back through the book. Did you have any help with mentors along the way?

[kohanz]

I was very impressed with Hartl's tutorial. Having tried many tutorials (for other technologies in the past), his was one of the best-written and most engaging. The fact that I completed it, including all the extra assignments, is a testament to how engaging it really is.

I can't say I've had a mentor yet, other than StackOverflow and random blog postings. I still consider myself a Rails n00b, but building a functioning web application in Rails is extremely easy. Doing it well and quickly, is probably something that will require more experience and mentorship.

[scubasteve]

I'm completely okay with moving from where I am to "complete n00b" :). I've always heard great things about Hartl's book, just never had the chance to sit through and keep going through it more than 1 chapter a week. Did you go through all the videos as well? Did you tackle TDD and git along the way?

[kohanz]

I only did the online version of the "book", so I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. I wasn't aware of there being videos, so no, I haven't seen those, but I have viewed numerous Railscasts since completing Hartl's initial introduction and those are invaluable too.

During the tutorial, I faithfully followed almost everything presented, including the extra work (e.g. using Postgres instead of MySQL so that the dev environment matches production more closely). This included TDD and Git. Git has been fairly painless because I have used Mercurial before and they are quite similar.

With my side project, that I started right after completing the tutorial, I initially used TDD extensively, for the basics of the model, but once the foundation was laid, I can't say that I have kept my test coverage up. I assume my story is not uncommon in that respect.