DEV Community

Moses_Ogada
Moses_Ogada

Posted on • Edited on

Who else wants to Learn Ruby on Rails?

Making money as a developer is easy when you pick a web development framework that is mature, easy to use and has large community support. Ruby on Rails stands out to be one of the highest paying technologies in web development as per StackOverflow survey of 2021. This is a good reason to start learning Ruby on Rails Now!

Advantages of Ruby on Rails

  1. Full stack framework: Web development has both the front end and backend. Front deals with the user interaction, whatever is displayed on the browser. Backend is mainly data processing and communication with other applications. Rails supports all this through the Model View Controller architecture. You can develop an Application Programming Interface (API) in Rails that gets fetched by a frontend application developed in another framework like React JavaScript.
  2. Model View Controller (MVC): Model delas with the database and processes user’s requests, the view displays the results to the user and forward requests from the user to the Controller which acts as an intermediary between the Model and View. This simply means that you don’t need to know how to write Structured Query Language (SQL) scripts so as to be able to get started with Rails. Defining a class gives you the freedom of using it as a table in the database.
  3. Easy to get started: with just a computer and internet access, Ruby on Rails. documentation provides direct steps to building your first application in just 15 minutes! Check it out rubyonrails.org
  4. Large community support: at early stages of learning its’s common getting stuck and things not working out as you expect, every master was once a beginner. Almost all problems that I encountered when starting Rails were solved through “Googling it technique” StackOverflow leading as the site to my solutions. Asking and posting questions here is free. With Artificial Intelligence making life easier, you can also use ChatGPT. The steps are simple, think of an idea, and type on ChatGPT specifying that you need it programmed in Ruby on Rails. Example “I need a login feature in Rails following the Model View Controller design pattern” This will provide code with explanations on how to achieve it.
  5. Knowledge and concepts acquired can be applied when learning other frameworks. MVC is common to other web development frameworks like Django-Python and PHP-Laravel, Spring MVC for Java. You can be productive and work as a developer with other teams easily. More Cash, you see!
  6. Security is highly considered, all data should be secure, Rails is good at this, it has Gems that support standardized authentications and authorization like Bcrypt gem
  7. Used by big tech companies, just to mention a few GitHub, Shopify, Airbnb, Basecamp, Crunchbase, Dribble and Bloomberg.

How to Learn Ruby on Rails.
The next question that you may be asking yourself now is, how do I learn Ruby on Rails? I will give you a practical guide on how I did it. These steps were shared by a friend who is a Senior Software engineer with over 10 years’ experience in Ruby on Rails programming. It’s proven to be efficient:

  1. Lean the basics of Ruby programming Language; Ruby on Rails in a full stack framework that has base on Ruby, an Object-Oriented programming language released in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto from Japan. You can learn it in 20 minutes! From its official documentation https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/
  2. Get straight to Ruby on Rails: the key concept that you should understand is the Model View Controller design pattern. This is simple if you follow the example of blog site developed in the Rails official documentation. It explains this concept in details with examples of source code in each step https://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
  3. After building the example in step 2, you will have tasted the honey, I’m sure you will think of developing something else. Yes, it’s very possible, read more documentation from the Rails community and read more books. I highly recommend reading Learn Enough Ruby on Rails to be dangerous by Michael Harlt, https://edu.anarcho-copy.org/Programming%20Languages/Ruby/ruby-rails-tutorial-learn-web-development-6th.pdf
  4. With step 3 done, now create a GitHub profile and think of something to build. https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/signing-up-for-github/signing-up-for-a-new-github-account
  5. Lastly, you may need a mentor and someone who understands the Ruby on Rails programming language and has built an application using it. That’s where Moses comes in; send an email to devmoses.ke@gmail.com I will show you on how I created my GitHub profile and have been developing systems in Rails since 2021. This is a completely free mentorship. We will learn together. Getting the Gold With just 5 steps, you can transition from any career to Software development. My promise to you is this, its’s not a walk in the path. This are the requirements:
  6. Patience
  7. Consistency
  8. Time and dedication
  9. Accepting that you will not always get it right at the first time
  10. Never stop learning.

You can checkout this my article to get a clue on this 5 points: https://dev.to/ogadamoses/one-thing-at-a-time-57hl

What Next?
Take your first step into making money as a Ruby on Rails Developer, start from the official documentation Ruby on Rails or a self-placed course at Learn Enough

Happy coding!

Top comments (0)