Ask HN: I learned RoR... what next? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I learned RoR... what next?

I created showwwdown.com and learned ruby on rails on the way.

I've really gotten hooked on RoR now, but I'm thinking, "what's next"? Should I just jump into a larger project and develop my RoR skills or is there more?

Should I start messing around with MongoDB and Coffeescript, or what would be the next logical step?

View on HN

IMHO, you're taking the wrong approach. Make something you'd like to make, then find the tools you need for that.

I mean, if you want to hack on your house so that it says "hey there!" whenever your friend (and not the mailman) walks in front of your house, I doubt CoffeeScript and MongoDB are going to get you far.

If you want to make a social local web app startup coolness like the other kids though, then yeah, those are fine.

Get what you are saying and very much agree with you :-).

I just have some intermediate time now (I'm studying at the moment) before I'll start on another thing and would like to look into some RoR-stuff, since I'm a hooked on it (I need my junk!).

So what should you be able to do in combination with RoR if you want a startup in the Bay Area to jump up and down over your skills?

They won't. Learn how to work with other engineers, designers, product managers, project managers, executives, operations, etc. Learn test-driven development. Learn how to say no to new projects. Learn when to say yes.

I'm studying at Hyper Island (HyperIsland.se), where we spend most of our time trying to learn that.

If you haven't gotten any skills to offer in such a team, you'll probably never get the chance to do so.

You may have learned how to build a site with RoR, but have you learned how to be a great developer? I wish I had when I was starting out and didn't get into bad habits.

Do you know how best to test your application? Do you know how to best deploy your apps? Do you know how to write good documentation?

It isn't the sexy stuff, and I still don't do enough of it, but I think if you get into these good habits now, the benefits will pay off in the long run (or so I hear anyway).

Though I agree with skrebbel, that if you find something you really want to build, that will often lead you to decisions of what to learn next, I think you can have some more guidance here.

I wouldn't jump into MongoDB and Coffeescript right away. Mongo is a specific tool for specific projects.

I wouldn't jump right into Coffeescript either, I think it is good to know proper Javascript (or some might disagree, but for the most part jQuery suffices at this point).

It looks like you used html5 boilerplate. How well do you understand it? I couldn't tell from the css, are you using SASS or similar CSS tool? I'd recommend that.

Javascript will be very important going forward, and I personally believe that most of my time is spent building front-end rather. Probably 3/4 of my time is spent on css and javascript. I'm building in Backbone now, but putting in and taking out of a database is pretty basic for the most part. I've started doing some NLP stuff, and still, the majority of my time is spent on front-end coding.

Summary, make sure you've got a good foundation for general best practices, spend your time becoming a great front-end coder.

By the ways, I don't understand what showwwwdown is, but you've built a nice looking site.

Thanks for the time you took answering my noob'ish questions :-).

There is still A LOT i need to learn about RoR and general programming... definitely!

I'm using HTML5 boilerplate for the site and using regular CSS and jQuery. I also spent a lot time front-end coding (you always end up doing that) on showwwdown and I think I learned some very nice things in the process.

What's the difference between sass and .less? I've messed a bit around with twitter bootstrap 2.0 and they are using .less. It's a very sexy way to write css, but I hate the fact you have to convert the .less files to css before you deploy.

Would you really work directly with javascript? Not with one of the frameworks? I hate javascript!

Thanks for the complement. Showwwdown is a site where you can start a competition if you have a dribbble invite to hand out and then people can post their best work to win that invite. Follow @showwwdown and I'll let you know when the next competition starts :-).

Hi i think that you need to work now in something that you're very passionate about, that's when the really hard work comes..

I started too with ROR to develop applications in less amount of time, and believe javascript i think is a good tool to implement with ROR, it will help you a lot to develop the front-end...

But please don't try to make another social network, or photo sharing app, i think there are too much right now, i have no doubt that this could help you improve your coding skills...i got crazy when i hear that this xx company is developing a new cool sharing app...that's all!

good luck in your next project!

Thanks a lot. Actually I was thinking about developing this new social network. You can only communicate by writing messages that's 70 character... think I'm gonna call it flutter. Nah, just kidding.

I'm also really tired of photo/sharing apps. I would really like to solve a real problem for people. Make something that's rally valuable to people and will make them come back to the service again and again. I love what Stripe is doing... Solving a real problem and doing it in an awesome way :-).

Would U use Javascript BTW? Not a Javascript framework?

haha flutter, like twitter but without the twi...yes i would use javascript if i make a project..

I'm trying to learn RoR as well.

If you are considering any onsite training...let me know what you think is best. Thanks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com