Introduction to Ruby and Rails

Personal background: Hi, I'm Josh! I'm 27 years old, married to Serena and we have a son Levi who lights up our life and wears us out, haha! I love playing guitar, listening to music, and PROGRAMMING :) I've spent some time in Taiwan, and I want to be fluent in Chinese (Mandarin) someday.

Technical Background/Experience Level:

• I've been programming since I was about 8. I started writing batch files in DOS which were just basic menus for my family (since they didn't know how to navigate the command line). Then I moved on to learning QBASIC and even programming simple songs with it.
• I started learning HTML around the age of 13. I was my high school's webmaster my senior year 2000-2001. In my sophomore year I took AP Computer Science A, which taught a lot about programming ideas and we used C++ to practice those ideas. (I scored a 4 out of 5 on the AP exam. In fact, our teacher was so good, everyone in my class but one guy got a 4. The other guy got a 5 and went on to MIT!) I also programmed a bunch of stuff in Ti-BASIC, most notably a Kroz/PacMan-esque game/maze. (I wonder if I could find that source code, haha!)
• In college, I took a Visual Basic course and aced it. It wasn't challenging, but I believe Ruby will be!
• From 2000-2005, I worked at my church programming websites in ColdFusion. Later, from 2007-2009 I was webmaster of 3 websites at my church.
• In 2010 I started working for a local company programming websites. That's where I started to teach myself PHP. But I know PHP is already old and Ruby is the future, so I hope to learn Ruby and maybe some day work for the software company Ministry Centered Technologies on their website PlanningCenterOnline.com!
• I also know my way around JavaScript/jQuery and CSS, but I don't remember how it all fits in with the above. I've been learning as much as I can through the years!
• Oh, and I'm in the beginning stages of learning how to program Android apps.

Blog/Website URLs:
http://twitter.com/lightmanx5
http://mystartpage.tk (I don't have a cool about.me page :( But I did make this mobile phone friendly site for getting to my favorite sites, quickly :) Feel free to use it, or let me know if you want the source code!)
http://www.OperationWebTools.com (my "work" blog, but it's nothing special. I only have a few good blog posts.)

Purpose For Taking This Course: I'd like to further my programming education and experience and someday work for a company where I can put that to good use!

Hello. I'm Aleks. I'm 34. I've been drawn to programming since high school, when we were learning BASIC, although I never seriously pursued it.

Right now, I'm considering a career change to programming, but I feel like I need to hone my skills before I do that.

Technical background:

I have been coding in HTML and later CSS off and on since about 2000 as a hobby. I'm familiar with PHP, but we're not on the first name basis. I did a lot of work with CMS, like WordPress, Joomla, Moveable Type, etc.

I've started a blog devoted to this class at http://chebureki76.tumblr.com.

What I hope to get out of this course: I want to meet new people who are passionate about programming. Hone my own skills. Have fun.

I'm Tyler Cipriani, I'm currently the Director of Technology at Custom Channels and SBR Creative Media (http://www.customchannels.net & http://www.sbrcreative.com - I relaunched both of those sites this past year).

Having my job at a smaller company means that I'm not only responsible for server monitoring and upgrades, but also 100% of the web development which means fluency in HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP and actionscript 2&3 and various frameworks that use those technologies.

My web design and dev is about the extent of my professional "programming" experience. I've used Visual Basic, a little delphi, a little python and a wee bit o' Perl but I probably wouldn't list those on my resume since I don't know those in any depth.

My goal in this course is to become comfortable enough with Ruby and the Rails framework to learn to implement a support ticketing system for the Custom Channels site - we'll see!

Who's got two thumbs and is excited to learn ruby? This guy! (That joke works better if you can see it, FYI)

Hi Hi, I'm Jaime, nice to meet you all :)

I'm a Spanish Telecom engineer and I'm currently living in Sweden with my gf. I love sci-fi, fantasy literature, games and programming (nerd!).

During my university years I coded mainly in C++ and Java, and then I worked for almost a year as a VB.NET developer programming database-driven desktop applications (it was then when I discovered my real passion for programming). I moved to Sweden and I am currently unemployed. It sucks 'cause I don't have a dime but it rocks 'cause I have plenty of time to read and study programming (I think I still have a lot of gaps in my education to fill because my specialization was Signals and Systems). The last 6 months I have been very interested in web development (I made a CMS on ASP.NET MVC and C# that is the engine of my website) and android mobile development.

Reading a lot of blogs, watching webcasts and listening to podcasts in the web development sphere I have been hearing great things about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, so I would very much like to check it by myself, learn a new language and framework and broaden (is that a real verb?) my horizons.

You can get more info about me at my website: http://www.barbarianmeetscoding.com

I'm probably the fossil of the group. I'll be 56 by the time the course is done. I live near Detroit, MI.

Personal Background:
I grew up in Wisconsin and got my degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduation I moved to the Los Angeles area for about 15 years. When I moved back to the midwest, I met my lady on IRC and located permanently to the Detroit area. I have been running Linux as my personal workstation since 1998 and served my own site since then.

Technical Background/Experience Level:
I have a BA in Comp Sci and one in Mathematics. When I got my degree only the Grad Students for to use interactive terminals so I used punchcards for my under grad work. My early work was on the VAX using VMS and System 7 Unix. My programming language of choice was C and C++ when it became available. I worked doing shell programming with korn shell and fell into the Microsoft Developement trap using Visual Studio. I have worked as a consultant for most of my career.

Blog/Website URLs:
My personal site is www.weyh.net which will be converted to ROR as I work thru this course. I also started a site using PHP along with Twitter, but I gave it to my son, who promptly broke it. I hope to convert it to Ruby on Rails as I learn here so keep a lookout for www.skillzdesk.com in the future.

Purpose For Taking This Course:
Having been a dormant solo programmer for the last 13 years, I've decided to get active and start applying myself and do some networking. I see web apps as the future of computing and love to learn new things.

I hope to be an asset to this group and use my experience to help others.

Hello, I'm Mario Duck (yes, that is my real last name :P), I'm a computer systems engineering student in Tijuana, Mexico, I'm 22 and hopefully I'll be graduating from college this year. I like listening to music and playing videogames (no surprise there).

I don't really have much job experience in the IT area, besides a few jobs in some call centers and a movie theater I've never had a real job. I have a couple projects concerning the local goverment and the local healthcare system, but we'll see how they go.

I have a blog on tumblr (yeah, I know) http://ductape.tumblr.com which I abandoned a few months ago, I'll probably use it to share my progress in this course.

Purpose For Taking This Course: I'm really interested in web development. I've learned some c# asp.net in the past but didn't really like it. Last year I started studying python and the django framework and thought it was awesome, so I'm really interested in learning what the differences between django an rails are, and if there's any benefit of using one over the other.

Hi everybody,

I am student and after finding P2PU to learn new things I released that was something great. I am from Moldova and I have Russian nationality. I've been leaving in San Francisco for 3 years. I've been programming since I was 13-14yo. However, I started programming for a web a year ago. So far, I feel pretty comfortable with PHP and also I'm not bad at ASP NET. Of course I am also good at JavaScript, HTML, CSS and other Front-end stuff. I've created a website for myself www.speakabout.org . It's kind of social bookmark service.

That's all for now

Hello!

My name is Chloe. I am a programmer analyst in Irvine, CA. I graduated from UC Irvine recently, and am trying to immerse myself with different programming languages and general technologies. Unlike many users here, programming did not come as naturally to me. I have a lot to learn still and I am looking forward to those challenges! The web world seems to constantly be changing and it is definitely worthwhile to take advantage of opportunities like this class to understand the trends and complexities of the web.

I currently program for a library website. I mostly work with PHP, Javascript, HTML, and some XSLT. During college, I learned Java and some C#.

I started a blog at http://chloeml.wordpress.com.

I am interested to learn about Ruby mostly due to curiousity. I've heard about ruby on rails from friends and became intrigued to learn about this language since it seems to be pretty popular and powerful. I want to learn as many languages as I can. I want to see what possibilities I have to make our website easier to use for our patrons. The library world seems to be shifting heavily to digital means of providing information to students and patrons. I want to be sure I am armed with the tools needed to make the flow of information possible in our website in this quickly changing world.

Hi everyone, name's Hany, pleased to meet you all and very pleased to have been accepted on to the course!

I'm 27, from London and have been living in Japan for about 5 years. I work in online marketing (mainly SEO) and have always been a keen programmer. I study Japanese, so I look forward to share many great learning techniques here, especially how to review learned material so you never forget!

I love making stuff, and cooking, especially sweets! I have a very logical way of thinking so sometimes the cake doesn't work out too well, I guess you need a fine balance between logic and creativity :)

My background in programming is mostly web related. My first ever book was Sam's teach yourself HTML 4 in 24 hours which I got as a present in 1996! Ever since, I've been fascinated with the web and how it's changed over the years, especially the rate at which it has changed. When it comes to programming, PHP has been my choice of languages - especially as now the frameworks make life a whole lot easier, and it's free. Free stuff is good. Open source is like the best idea ever and P2PU is amazing, what an awesome idea.

Looking forward to getting to know you all better!

http://twitter.com/hanysb

Hello Everybody,
I am Ranendra Adhikari from Kathmandu, Nepal. I like to watch and play football, and yes its the one where only goalies are allowed to use their hands. I love to walk in the woods and listen music in my spare time.
I am a computer science student and recently joined a local company as a web developer. I have some experience with PHP, jQuery and a few bits of Java. I have looked at ruby some time ago but didn't took it seriously until rails 3 was released. The flexibility of ruby and the emphasis on 'test' is what i find different in ruby community than other programming community. And I believe, learning ruby will make me a better programmer.

Fell free to poke me with your questions and comment. Looking forward to learn with you all.

http://twitter.com/ardnenar

Hi all!

A lot of very interesting posts here already.

My name is Stan, I'm 26 (recently made it!) and living in Toronto, Canada.

Unlike most computer science people I know, I didn't start very early.
Computers (not the mention the internet!) weren't very accessible while I was in elementary school (I'm originally from Bulgaria) and although I was very much into computers in high school, I didn't do any serious programming until my university years.
I don't know why exactly. It could have been a language barrier thing or just interest in other things.

I do think that this puts me in somewhat of a disadvantage, but I don't dwell on it too much!

Graduated from university with computer science a couple of summers ago.
In terms of practical knowledge gained, I did some Java, C and bash. Nothing else really stuck.

At my current job (one year now) I have to mainly use PHP and write lots of db queries (mysql, access, some mssql). There's a pinch of Java in there as well, but that's almost too rare to earn the mention (I'm desparate).

I'm not going to diss PHP - it's made web development so easy and it's given us a lot of great CMSs that have made web publishing super accessible even if you are not awfully tech savvy.
I'm certainly hoping it will stay strong for a while yet!

However, after an year of it, I felt a sudden urge to take on something new and exciting.
Recently I even considered taking a few courses at university (gasp!) again just for the sake of learning something new and challenge the (now) old brain cells again with scenarios different from every-day coding and troubleshooting.
Don't get me wrong, those can be very challenging as well, but can become monotonous and made me feel like I'm not making much of a progress on a more personal level.

I came upon this course on the p2pu website and it all made perfect sense (believe me, that was an exciting evening!).
I've been hearing and hearing about ruby (our sys admin is raving about it everytime he comes in the office) and I'm sometimes a little exasperated with php's clumsiness, so this is a great opportunity for me to finally get going with ruby while enjoying myself 1000 times more than I would by just reading a book about it.

What else...
I love Linux and used to try all possible distros a few years ago, but can't claim a great deal of knowledge there.
I mainly use Windows nowadays but when I do get back to Linux (using it on a netbook), it just feels good.

As for myself on the web, I'm a very irregular poster so no links to advertise.

That covers it!

Hi, I'm Dan.

Born in London, now living near Seattle, I've been programming since I got my first computer back in the early 1980s, an Apple IIe. I have a CS/Math degree and for the past 23 years I've been working as a business application developer. Up until the mid-90's I was a mainframe guy, working primarily with SAS. I then started playing around with VB and PowerBuilder, before getting hooked on the WWW. I've primarily been a Java/Web developer since then, at first working on business applets and Perl based systems, and then moving to server-side Java development, with a significant focus on databases, but never leaving the client side and working a lot with JSPs and JavaScript. I've been in a variety of consulting positions which have given me a chance to dabble in a wide range of programming environments within the Java eco-system, and I'm currently working an assignment at AT&T.

My personal website is at http://www.kirkdorffer.com/. I don't plan to maintain a blog during this class (after blogging on politics for 4 years, I need a break from that), but I do maintain a personal wiki at http://www.kirkdorffer.com/wiki/ for my technical notes, and I'll likely throw stuff up there related to this course from time to time. I hope I can keep up with the online class chatter during the day, but I suspect my work responsibilities will mean I'll have to mostly interact at night. Having said that I realize we're from all over the world, so I'm expecting this will be a class that's active 24 hours a day.

Programming is a field you have to stay current in or you risk becoming a dinosaur. My answer to the stereotypical interview question about what I'd like to be doing five years from now is that I hope to be working on something that hasn't yet been invented! So I regularly attend local user and study groups, read books and tutorials, and play around with stuff on the side all the time to stay abreast of new technologies - and to keep my resume fresh. As a Web developer I see that there is a lot going on out there using Ruby and Rails, and this course will give me a great opportunity, and excuse, to really sink my teeth into them and learn them - at least that's my hope. As an added bonus it looks like I going to learn Git, and perhaps a few other technologies and tools I'm not familiar with but that all the cool kids are using these days.

I'm looking forward to it!

Hello all, great to see that this is a diverse group with people from all around the world.

I currently work in Content Management for a small technology company which primarily develops golf GPS software, but I am really interested in starting my own company. After living in Philadelphia for most of my life I finally made it out to San Diego about three years ago and I don't plan on moving anytime soon. I have a BA in Philosophy and Political Science, an MBA, and I have been taking classes in Computer and Information Science through the local community college system for the past year. I have taken classes in Java, C++, Networking and Systems Analysis and Design. I also know some HTML/CSS and a little PHP and MySQL.

I love the challenge of learning how to program (most of the time), and I also hope that being able to do a little coding myself will help me with my startup (even though I'll probably handle everything but coding to start). I spend a good portion of my day reading technology and business blogs and I have read a lot about how fun Ruby is to use. I recently went through most of Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby and also checked out Rails for Zombies. I think it was the novel approach to learning I saw in these that made me really interested in Ruby and Rails.

site: http://www.anthonyzazo.com (I will probably put a feed together over the next week for this class)
twitter: @azazo

I can't wait to get started!

Wow, a lot of really cool people in the course, it seems. I doubt anyone will even make it through this thread of doom to my little profile. :P

My name is Michael Kelly. I'm a senior in Computer Science at Florida Tech; I graduate in May. I do web development for my CS department at school, working primarily on frontend HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and backend PHP.

In June I will start working full time with Mozilla as a web developer, and have to learn Python before then. I've also interned at Electronic Arts for two summers as a web developer.

The best place to count as a website for me would be my github, which has a few interesting projects: https://github.com/Osmose

I won't be blogging, but you can find me on the class IRC channel #p2pu-rubyrails on freenode as Osmose1000. I'm happy to help others who don't have a lot of programming experience!

I wanted to take this course to learn the Ruby/Rails way of designing web apps. Learning the language and syntax is one thing, but my real focus is to grok some of the deeper design philosophies that people who use Ruby on a day-to-day basis know and love. Plus, all the hip kids know Ruby already. :P

Hi! everybody,

My name is Pablo Rodriguez and I'm from Pamplona (Spain). I just finished my degree in Telecommunications Engineering and (like everyone in Spain) seeking for job with no success... Then, I do have time for increasing my programming knowledge (poor so far :) ). As I read, there are real experts here and I hope I'll learn a lot from all of you.

Technical Background/ Experience level:
During my college period I came across with many languages but I never got deep in any them. This is my general feeling about my degree: I know a little about a lot things but not enough of any of them. Then I have used Pascal, C, HTML+CSS, PHP... Besides, I did my Master Thesis in antennas field writing a lot of Matlab code.
I do not have any website...yet!

Purpose for taking this course:
I would like to learn a new and trendy language for web apps as well as meeting new people from all over the world

Greetings!!

hey everyone,

I'm Saikrishna Poddutur from India. I am pursing my bachelors degree in Information Technology from IIIT-A, presently in senior year. I just started my intern at a start-up called positive solutions and in coming months would be working around web technologies for the company. In 6 moths i would complete my graduation and would be looking for a job.

i know html,css,javascript,mysql. I am a decent java programmer and worked with j2me. Recently learned opencl and plan to contribute to the community. I am quite familiar parallel computing, image processing. Interested in mobile technologies (OS and applications). Like solving puzzles using code.

As i hope to become a web application developer this is quite a essential course for me. I consider this a really a great opportunity to share and learn with all you guys. It is a real privilege to learn with people coming from various background

Hi everybody,
my name is Fabio Pozzi, and I live in Seveso, a little town near Milan, Italy.
I'm giving my last exams to finally take my Master of Science @ Politecnico di Milano.
I started enjoying programming when I started playing with python and ruby some time ago.

While studying I work as web developer in a little startup here in Milan.
I know python, ruby, and c even if I use ruby or python most of the time.
I'm getting passionate about web development, especially since I've heard about rails and started playing a little with it.
Apart from the web-applications field, I have a little bit of experience with linux system administration, embedded system and computer security.

I'm here to learn as much as I can and most of all, I'm happy to meet new people and share experience.

I'm trying to develop a little blog in rails but it's not finished yet, so I will not disclose the url yet, even if it's easy to guess :)

With so many people all over the world it would be cool if we had a map to track where we all are, maybe something like this:

http://www.mapservices.org/myguestmap

Is that something we could add to the course site?

Dan

I've been a web application developer in Virginia (USA) for a few years. I'm an advocate for libraries, animal rescue, education, and open source. You can probably find me on IRC (freenode) as jledbetter.

http://www.jessicaledbetter.com

Purpose For Taking This Course:
I love languages and know enough in a few to be dangerous. Java is fine and all but it's time to get to know Ruby. I hear great things about it with Rails as its framework and can't wait to compare it to Java and JSF/Seam. Plus, my partner is in this course so it will be even more fun :)

Hi! I'm Jim, I'm a recent college grad from the metro Detroit area. I work in a hybrid vehicle battery test lab as a programmer. I work on tests and test automation in a proprietary language, and have written other apps for the lab in Python, as well as worked on a Blackberry app there. Outside of work, I've done a couple of projects for a private music community I belong to.

I'm taking this class for a few reasons:
- I'm getting more into web development lately, and have really noticed the awesomeness that is the Ruby community.
- I'd like to get more insight on MVC design.
- I have some Redmine plugins I would love to write for work.
- I've never taken any sort of class like this!

I'm excited for the experience, should be quite fun.

Hello, I am Developer and worked mostly on scripting with Perl and XML. Starting using Ruby at work a couple months and was really intrigued and would like to learn Rails to bring ideas to the Web.

Hey everyone!

My name is Chris Wade. I do not work professionally in the tech world, but would like that to change asap!
I've been in love with music and technology most of my life. I have a degree in Percussion Performance and since I graduated some time ago, managed to play around the world--super awsome experiences, but it's still not enough to pay the bills, yet.

My programming background includes Perl, HTML, CSS a little PHP, and dabbling in Python, Javascript and Ruby. I am pretty familiar with Catalyst, which is Perl's MVC web framework and enjoy working in an MVC environment.

I've taken some other OpenSource classes here in Minneapolis offered by EXCO, an experimental College and it was a really great experience. I'm now super excited to get started at P2PU-- so many cool people to interact and learn with!

My blog is at christopherwade.net and I will be updating periodically.
Also, I tweet at @cwademusic

My main goal is to continue self-teaching and try to wrap my head around this awesome 'new' language, ultimately to help me get a job that gives me more satisfaction.

Wow, time to catch up...missed this, my apologies :P

After my CS degree I started working as an application developer (junior, then senior, then…); so far, it's been nine years and now I'm starting web development…so it's a good reason to enroll here!

I have used many different languages: ASM, C, C++, Pascal, Modula, Eiffel…basically at the university. Mainly at work we used VB legacy and VB.NET (hopefully we migrated everything to the .NET platform) and scripting languages (bash comes first to my mind, on unix system, but also DOS batch, PerlScript…).

I'm starting from scratch with Ruby/RoR but I'm very excited since it's my intention to stick to it for a long, long time using it to implement solutions on an small startup I created with a friend, here in Barcelona.

You'll probably find me on IRC (okiwan) or you can use the standard methods to contact me. Delighted to share and learn with you!

Personal Background: Hi, I am Sudeep Padalkar, 26yrs old, getting married shortly(on 9th march 2011). Love to learn anything and everything, especially related to technology. I love the concept of alternate thinking. Would love to setup a tech portal some time down the line. (So people interested please get in touch)

Technical Background/Experience Level:I am a php Programmer working on a site related to movies, I am responsible for the social networking integration for this site and other 3rd party implementations across the site. I have worked on the configuration and setup of the site on the amazon cloud. Love to dabble around in different aspects of the site like SEO implementation, performance and much more... Worked on the UI for site using DHTML, CSS, JQUERY, XSL transformation....

Blog/Website URLs: twitter handle:- /holysatan

Purpose For Taking This Course: I want to be able enough to work and create a single implementation using different languages. And want to dive into the world of ROR. Desperately waiting for the course to get started.. Till then would get acquainted with the people around here...