May LRUG talk

Learning To CodeThe adventures, frustrations and triumphs of a newbie Ruby developer

!by !

Angela Ebirim

“Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Angela!”

My trusty companion

Toto

and the others…Tin man The Lion The Scarecrow

Self-beliefPassion Intellect

And so we begin!

Setting up your dev environment

• What’s RVM?

• Git anyone?

• Which editor to use?

• Install Ruby

• What is Rails ?• RubyMine

• VIM

• Sublime

• Rubygems

• Virtual Machine• Command line

• Bugs

• Google it• Stack Overflow

• source code repository

Learning Ruby & Rails• Online tutorials e.g. CodeSchool, RailsCasts• Books e.g. Pickaxe• Rails Girls• CodeCraft Academy• Pairing with an experienced developer• Finding a mentor• Practice, practice, practice!

Writing code• Most of the time your program won’t work

• Can take you from depths of despair to euphoria in 5 ms

• Frustrating - 2 steps forward, 1 step back

• Teaches you to ask better questions

• Collaborative - Rubygems

• Extremely creative - a million routes to a destination

Conclusion• Never stop learning• Not about the destination, it’s about the journey• Never be afraid to say “I don’t know” and ask for help• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes• Get people to want to help you by doing your homework• Have self-belief• Stay focused• Attention to detail• Passion for building and breaking things

My Emerald City!

To be a competent developer

Thank you

Angela Ebirim https://github.com/trekr5