[LRUG] Advice for a newbie

[Brandon Burton]

Hey Tom,

Glad to hear you're looking to switch to being a software engineer. I
recently made the switch myself (I start my first day tomorrow!). I started
much like yourself by using whatever resources were available online and I
also looked a facilitating that with some good books while working
full-time. It's absolutely doable!

Personally, I can vouch for https://teamtreehouse.com/. It's not free but
it's not expensive and I really enjoyed the courses they have prepared.
Choosing a course for Ruby on Rails doesn't just have you learning RoR but
it also introduces you to databases, command line, html, css, etc. They've
got quite a few options on there so maybe give that a look.

The books I've used are Agile Web Development with Rails 4 and The Well
Grounded Rubyist. Agile Web Dev is a much more hands on book while Well
Grounded feels a bit more theoretical in its approach.

To continue learning I'm currently doing the exercises on exercism.io and
those are great. Definitely challenging with the opportunity to make the
tests harder by enabling more tests in the test suite.

In terms of the "best place to find a job", to me, that seems to be your
local ruby meet-up. My job offer came from doing a presentation at NWRUG in
Manchester on the same night that someone was looking to hire a junior. I
would definitely encourage you to visit your local Ruby meet-up if you have
one as it's an easy way to meet new people in the industry.

Cheers,
Brandon

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 6:21 PM, Jimmy MG Lim <mirageglobe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> Practise makes perfect. I also recommend http://poignant.guide/ as a
> guide for general ruby. Although bit of an overkill but selecting a front
> end like angular / react (js) will also go a long way towards full-stack.
>
> orz
>
> Jimmy
>
>
> On Sun, 10 Apr 2016 at 15:14 Riccardo Tacconi <rtacconi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> While developing in Ruby, you will use the terminal a lot, so using a
>> unix terminal (bash or zsh) is useful, this is a simple but good course
>> http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/. I would lear Ruby from here:
>> http://learnrubythehardway.org/ (it is the easiest way not the hardest).
>> From the same author you can learn SQL too. Then you will need to learn
>> HTML and CSS, try https://www.codecademy.com/learn/web. From code
>> academy you can learn Javascript and Ruby too. To be honest you can use
>> JavaScript for the frontend and backend too (nodejs) so you will have to
>> learn just one programming language.
>>
>> You have a bachelor in natural languages, programming (artificial
>> languages) are a bit different, they are something between natural
>> languages and computer hardware. However Ruby is very expressive and you
>> might find it not too difficult to understand. Programming languages like
>> Haskell are coming from Maths (lambda calculus) and the look much more like
>> Mathematics.
>>
>> So if I were you I would learn HTML and CSS, then JavaScript. Then you
>> can decide if you want to learn nodejs (javaScript) or Ruby. Then SQL.
>>
>> I assumed that you want to learn web development.
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> On 10 April 2016 at 10:51, Tom Yates <tomy8s at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all and hello,
>>>
>>> I am looking at a career change into the world of programming,
>>> specifically ruby. I was wondering if anyone had some advice for me on:
>>>
>>> 1. How to prepare myself for working in (ruby) programming - i.e. what
>>> are useful things to know/learn beforehand.
>>>
>>> 2. The best places to look for (and hopefully find) a job.
>>>
>>>
>>> A bit about me:
>>>
>>> Whilst working full-time I've been teaching myself ruby, PHP, html 5,
>>> css 3, js and a bit of SQL through watching online courses, mostly at
>>> udemy.com and messing around with the language. I've just started
>>> reading "The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton. I've uploaded my projects to
>>> github.com/tomy8s (feel free to look!), and I've just started putting
>>> together a mess of a rails app at tomy8s.herokuapp.com . I have a
>>> bachelors degree in languages (French, Spanish and Slovene) - vaguely
>>> related to a degree in ruby, python and C?
>>>
>>> I'd be very grateful for any advice you could give, no matter how
>>> crazy/unusual it sounds.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> And thank you very much if you've read this far! :)
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Riccardo Tacconi
>>
>> http://github.com/rtacconi
>> http://twitter.com/rtacconi
>> _______________________________________________
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> --
> Jimmy MG Lim
>
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