Sunday, December 12, 2010

Day 4 & 5 of 40: TESTHEAD BOOT CAMP: Rails Wiki and the First Application

Marlena Compton put it in interesting perspective when she asked me "so, do you really and seriously want to learn how to code Ruby and Rails, or is this an excuse to avoid family for the holidays :)?" Well, the fact is that I do want to learn how to code Ruby and Rails, but also associated with that reality is the fact that I do want to see my family and interact over the holidays, so with two Christmas parties, church, family visits and "Session 3 of Weekend Testing Americas", the weekend was almost a total bust for making headway on my goal. Almost, but not quite :).

I decided to check out a little bit more about making a move into understanding Rails better, and that brought me back to the Rails Wiki. More than just being a great resource for installing and configuring Rails, it's also a good place to do the first application setup and play with the code. Rails Wiki has a nice little walkthrough that demonstrates how to set up a server, interact with SQLite, and learn a bit of Ruby/Rails syntax. It's a small piece, I'll be honest, and I hoped I'd have more to show for it, but if I've learned anything, it's better to do a little bit each day than to wait and hope for a big block of time to sit down and dedicate to programming. 20 minutes a day can do wonders, but you have to commit to the 20 minutes each day! My problem is always that there seems to be something else that will cause me to change on a dime and take care of those other details (other ADD kids like me call this the "ooh, shiny!" reaction, or those who have seen the Pixar movie "Up!" can substitute the word "Squirrel!" here... it's basically the same thing :) ).

So here's hoping that the coming week will have more 20 minute sessions (or better :) ) to look towards. On today's docket, my plan is to go back through WTANZ session transcripts and follow along with some of the Watir sessions and the Cucumber and Gerkin session.

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