Getting Started: First Steps in Ruby/Rails Development

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Knowledge Prerequisites

This course assumes that you have:

• Proficiency in the use of a code editor. Visual Studio Code (VSCode) and Atom are two good editors, and both are free. If you use VSCode, be sure that you install the Ruby extensions.
• Basic proficiency in the use of the Mac or Linux terminal command line: ls, touch, cd, pwd, rm. If you need to acquire command line skill, here is a class: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/introduction-to-the-terminal
• Some familiarity with the git code version control system. You do not have to be git experts. Here is a cookbook: https://learn.codethedream.org/git-and-github-starter/

Some Other Skills You May Need

Basic HTML and CSS. You will not need this until the Rails part of the course, and what is done for those lessons is not very complicated. If you need to study this, there is a useful Treehouse course: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/introduction-to-html-and-css

Some JavaScript (for the very last lesson), including AJAX asynchronous calls with fetch. See this course: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/working-with-the-fetch-api

Hardware Prerequisites

You will need one of the following:

1. A reasonably current Mac machine
2. A reasonably current Linux machine
3. A reasonably current 64 bit Windows machine with at least 8G of memory

If you don’t have one of these, post to the slack channel for class questions. It is possible to use Linux on Chromebooks, and there are various other workarounds. The configuration instructions we provide are for Ubuntu Linux, although it is possible to use other distributions.

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If You Have a Windows Machine

It is not possible to do Rails development on native Windows. So, you have the following choices:

1. Configure your machine for dual boot, so that you can boot Linux. Then follow the instructions we provide for setting up a Linux box.
2. Or, configure the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is tricky.
3. Or, run Linux under Windows using the Vagrant system image we provide (best choice, if you have doubts).

The provided Vagrant image is compact. It does not have a GUI. When using the Vagrant image, you use your code editor and your web browser from within native Windows.

Configuring Your Machine

There are instructions for machine setup here: https://learn.codethedream.org/configuring-your-machine-for-ruby-rails-development/

There are Treehouse videos for Linux and Mac setup, but they have small errors. Please look at our instructions as well as the videos. If you are running Windows and are uncertain how to start, follow the instructions that install the Vagrant image.

Be sure you get your machine set up soon, and ask questions in Slack if you have trouble.

When Your Machine Is Configured

You will have:

• Your editor
• Git
• Ruby
• Bundler
• Rails
• node.js

Vagrant users will do all Ruby, Rails, Bundler, and Git commands from within the Vagrant Linux command line, but will do editing and web browser access to the lessons using native Windows.

Verifying Your Setup

Your setup is working if you can create a running Rails instance. I will show you how to test this.

Note that we give you starter git workspaces for each Rails application in the course, except for the final project. You should not do “rails new” for the assignments -- just do a git clone of the repository you fork.

When You Submit an Assignment

Submitted code should run correctly. It should also be correctly indented.

Be sure your Squibby submission is a link to the pull request you create. The URL will look something like:

https://github.com/Code-the-Dream-School/Backend-sqlintro/pull/1

A Lesson Walk-Through

I am going to do part of lesson 2 as an example. I am going to do the following steps:

1. Fork the lesson workspace (in github).
2. Git clone my fork (from the terminal command line).
3. Create a git branch for the lesson.
4. Edit a file within the lesson.
5. Test my changes.
6. Git stage the file.
7. Git commit the file.
8. Git push the branch back to my fork.
9. Create a pull request, from my branch to the original repository.
10. Submit a link to my pull request using Squibby.

Tips on Taking the Treehouse Classes

One way to take the courses is just to watch the videos and to complete the quizzes that go with them. You won’t remember much if you do it that way.

In the Treehouse Rails classes, you will be shown development of an application called blog. As you are shown it, you should pause the video and DUPLICATE the steps the instructor is doing within your development environment, so that you have a version of the application that matches the capabilities the instructor has implemented.