Okay, this is full-on nerdery. So anyone out there who can't rhyme off what HTTP stands for, you might want to pass on this post. But you geeks, come get some love!
So I'm a bit of a passive geek. I love the new new things but I can't program worth a lick, which, if you're a geek and still reading this, you will have been able to tell from this website. It's simple and basic. I stink at design so it's mostly text. It's kinda all about text (stories) anyway, so that makes sense to me. I've done some tiny modifications to the standard MovableType templates and run with it. I haven't upgraded my blog software since I installed it. I still can't get that damned horizontal line to display properly in some browsers on every non-blog page on the site. Okay, you get it.
Now I'm trying to expand my skills. I want to be able to do some of the wow things that I see all the cool kids on the web doing. I want to build some active interfaces. I want to create objects. I want to do things that I know can be done but that I don't know how to do. And I think I want to do it within the Ruby on Rails open source framework. (I could be talked out of this if you have a persuasive argument to make.) I don't have any illusions about being a complete programmer, or getting a job doing software development. But I want to be able to hack around with my own site.
How can I learn to do this? I don't see any courses, seminars or workshops to teach this stuff. The only things out there are for the geeks who already get it. I know that they get together to superdose on caffeine and hyperagree on just how cool programming is with Ruby on Rails. I've been there, listened in and gotten nothing out of it. I need to not jump to advanced-level understanding at level one, but I don't want to be stuck in the class where we learn how push the power button. So, any advice?
Posted by James Sherrett at December 14, 2005 03:31 PMLearning Ruby to make a Web site is like learning chemical engineering to race cars, or horticulture to be a chef. It's interesting, but not totally relevant.
You want to get good at MT, CSS and all the groovy extensions and APIs that let you put cool things on your site. Start with a book on Hacking MT. Then get one about Designing Web with Standards, and a CSS book frm Eric Meyer. (If I wasn't lazy, those would be links to Amazon.)
Then start looking at other folks Web sites, make a list of all the little features you like, and then go about learning to implement them one by one.
Of course, if you wanted to switch away from MT (which I highly recommend), you might try WordPress or EE.
TTFN
Travis
You might want to take a look at 'Agile Web Development with Rails' (it was co-written by David Heinemeier Hansson, one of the creators of the Rails framework).
Here are the links that were stripped out:
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html
http://www.loudthinking.com/
Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll start a progressive bit of autodidactism, brushing up on my HTML and CSS and getting into some of the gearhead action if I need to do more.
Posted by: James at December 16, 2005 09:12 AM