<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">I felt that the project you make in 'Agile Web Development with Rails' was quite good at teaching me and making something along the way. I did that and dived straight into using RoR for a client, nothing like the deep end to learn to swim. I wouldn't really recommend that though, It was not a time sensitive project.<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>One of the best part of ruby for me is the readability, and hence the easiness to learn from other peoples code, and less time spent trying to figure out what your doing (counting brackets, searching semi-colons).</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I therefore would call Ruby (and rails) and very 'deep-endable' language. Just do one of those things on your to-do list, like a personal site custom CMS, or maybe a to-do list.</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV> <DIV class="vcard" style="border: solid #555 1px; border-left: none; border-right: none; padding:5px; color: #333; float:left; width:95%;"> <IMG style="float:left; margin-right:4px; padding: 12px;" src=" http://abscond.org/ext/abscondlogo50.gif" alt="photo" class="photo"> <DIV style="float:left; padding:8px;"> <A class="url fn" href="http://absconddesign.com" style="font-size:140%; color:#333">James Darling</A> <DIV class="org">Abscond Design</DIV> <A class="email" href="mailto:james@abscond.org" style="color:#333">james@abscond.org</A> <DIV class="tel">07811407085</DIV> <A class="url" href="aim:goim?screenname=abscond@mac.com" style="color:#333">AIM/iChat</A> </DIV> <DIV class="adr" style="float:left; padding:8px;"> <DIV class="street-address">Rose Cottage<BR> Gwavas Road</DIV> <SPAN class="locality">Newlyn<BR></SPAN> <SPAN class="region">Cornwall<BR></SPAN> <SPAN class="postal-code">TR18 5EG<BR></SPAN> <SPAN class="country-name">UK</SPAN> </DIV> </DIV> </DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On 19 Oct 2006, at 10:19, Pierre Nel wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Hi!</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I'm from a PHP background, and bought Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">for Rails Developers <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>and Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Edition), and I've probably watched all the screencasts, and tried a</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">few of the examples. In a practical sense, I'm guessing the best way</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">to actually learn a language is to try and do something with it -</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">other than the usual "Create a Blog in 5 Minutes" tutorials.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Does anyone have suggestions on little projects to try, to slowly</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">increase my familiarity with Ruby & RoR? Something I bit more involved</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">than creating a blog, and less involved than some crazy API mashup :-)</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Also, does anyone have any tips regarding "unlearning" all the awful</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">PHP I'm familiar with, especially it's awful OOP mode, which I never</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">really got to grips withl, so I can start afresh with RoR instead?</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Thanks!</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Pierre</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">chat mailing list</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:chat@lrug.org">chat@lrug.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org">http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org</A></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>