Crawling Through the Seemingly Muddy Waters of Rails

I am a student of Flatiron School and I am now completing the ruby on rails section of the course. Starting learn rails seemed to be a exciting new endeavor that I was more than up for. That excitement quickly turned to confusion and a discouragement for me. I was enamored by the 'rails magic' and thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever. Then rails forms happened. I understood the over all point of forms however, it just didn't stick and I couldn't understand the routing of it all. What should have taken a week or two took about 3 for me to fully understand. From there learning rails routing became the equivalent to looking at an electrical fuse book. There were cables everywhere and I didn't know where to start. Not only didn't I know where to start, I was so intimidated I almost gave up. For me the strange part; I have never been afraid of challenges and always welcomed them. After so long of being confused and re-reading everything, searching for videos, and headaches, I came to myself and just went after it like a deranged man. That meant that everyday I was rails code and going through lessons(most times a single lesson) for hours until I could figure out what was going on. Admittedly, not the most effective way to learn, but it works for me because I learn best the hard way. Along the way I picked up some extras the course didn't teach. Like how to render a partial from a different class/controller onto a view. In addition, gems are the best! These simple additions to your projects add a enormous amount of simplicity and reduces time spent implementing features. At the end of this chapter I have learned a lot about the importance of understanding the tools you have and your code base. This Section has reaffirmed of the importance of having grit and being intentional with reading and your time.