Web Developer Makeover - It Finally Happened 5
What a great weekend! We got together with 20 great people to learn Rails together this past Saturday, and Brian and I had a good time. And I'm really glad to say that it seems everyone else also had a good time, too.
We're going to follow up with a more substantial post this week, but I wanted to give an immediate thank-you to Michael Leung for being willing to help us out. Everyone's PC is a little different, and troubleshooting a few problems with Ruby and/or Rails and/or MySQL on Windows would have been hard work for us without his help. Michael has given a lot to the Rails on Windows community. Although Michael isn't actively coding on RideMe anymore, he's still donating time and resources to keep it going. The inevitable question of IDEs came up during our class, and I hope everyone will take a look at RideMe (and even better, contributing to it, if you know C#). Michael is an excellent Rails developer, and it was reassuring to have him there and to keep us honest. :-)
Just a few quick observations about the class:
Although advertised as a class for former Microsoft developers who want to learn about Rails on Windows, several very cool-looking Macs showed up. Which we thought was great. We demonstrated Ruby and Rails on Windows Vista, Windows XP running inside Parallels on a Mac, and then on the Mac itself, to show that you can develop your Rails apps on either operating system (and we do). (Brian develops mostly on his awesome MacBookPro these days; I use an iMac at my new day-time Rails job, and I use Windows XP for Rails development when I'm at home.)
I was especially happy to see how many attendees had never developed a Web site by themselves before in any programming language. I hadn't either before I learned Rails. I had been a client software developer my whole career (C/C++/C#). My attempts at ASP (and later ASP.NET) just depressed me...writing my own ORM later each time was just the worst. Last year Rails opened up a new world of programming joy to me, and I'm so glad we had a chance to spread the good news of Rails to these folks.
Everyone who came was nice! I don't know what it is, but the Ruby community just seems to attract nice people. No heckling the entire day, and no fruit was thrown (ok, I admit, I thought about throwing selected items lunch buffet at Brian at one point, but I resisted the urge.)
A surprising number of people were from out of town. I remember people saying they were from Seattle, Florida, Memphis, and New York (and I bet I'm forgetting about a couple others).
Thanks again to all who came. And for those who couldn't attend this time around, we hope to see you next time.
Three hour delay flying to Chicago, eight hour delay flying back (snow/crowds/chaos), but it was still worth the trip! Brian and Jeff did a great job. I'd definitely recommend a future seminar to someone who's read the books, but wants to take it to the next level and ask a bunch of questions.
The hotel staff were great too, by the way - they let me come back and sleep during the Sunday flight delay!
My flight delay was less painful than Dan's (8 hours - ouch! - I only had one hour on the way there). Brian and Jeff know Ruby and Rails very well and have their own views on some key features of Rails. They did a great job of squeezing tons of material into a one day event. I was able to move past some confusions regarding Ruby syntax. They strongly advocated for learning as much Ruby as you can as it can only benefit you as a Rails developer. That is not something you always hear in the Rails community.
Needless to say, I was very impressed. Great work guys! I was inspired to create a Ruby/Rails user group and I already have a few people interested.
It was my pleasure!
Brian and Jeff, you did a great job. My wife could tell I had a good time when I called on my way home....just by the sound of my voice :)
Having used Rails for over a year, I wasn't sure how much technical stuff I'd learn, but I wasn't disappointed. The unit testing was especially helpful, considering how hard it is in .NET (well, at least VB.NET). The pacing was good too. I was actually surprised at how much material was covered.
I would definitely recommend attending future workshops with these guys. Glad to have you guys in Chi-town. One thing I would have liked was to introduce ourselves at the beginning. It's helpful if you want to track someone down for a breaktime conversation.
Just have to say thanks for putting on this event. My exposure to Rails before the workshop was primarily on my own machine as I have worked through zillions of demos from the web and books. I had several "A-HA!" moments throughout the day and can highly recommend the workshop just for the fact that you can see things/ask questions "in real life"... I'd think about re-attending myself! :)
I wrote up a bit more on the Softies on Rails Workshop on my website. Thanks again for such a great event...