Learning Rails, workshop, course, resources - ruby-on-rails-3

Trying to learn rails, but the beast is quite complex for a beginner :)
Anybody knows of courses, workshops, mentoring etc In London Uk.
I don't have a programming background, bu i'm a web designer/developper.
Cheers

I know this doesn't directly answer you current question but I found that the Ruby On Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl really helped me.
Here is a link: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?version=3.2

Related

Route for learning Smalltalk aka Squeak

Calling Jedi Masters of the Smalltalk universe,
I have knowledge of C++/Python/Perl and have been coding for 5+ years now.
I have to fork Scratch - MIT's Visual programming language to add support for a robotic kit. Scratch is created using Squeak, which is an implementation of Smalltalk.
I am planning to read A Little Smalltalk - By Timothy budd followed by Sqeak By Examples - By Oscar Nierstrasz [http://squeakbyexample.org/]
Do you think this is a good idea ?. What would you suggest ?. Are there free video tutorials I can watch.
End objective is to be able to make sense of scratch codebase. I want to get hang of smalltalk once before I can make sense of the (as of now) weird looking Squeak development environment and its ways.
Luke Smallwalker
Actually, I work with the core developers of Scratch for Arduino! It may be a good start for you to take a look at its code.
I think A Little Smalltalk goes a bit too deep for what you'll need. Squeak by example is, IMO, much better suited as an entry point to the language.
Also, you may want to take a look at Prof Stef for Amber, which is not an intro to Squeak but to Amber Smalltalk. Anyway the syntax is pretty much the same and it will get you a first good idea of what Smalltalk feels like.
HIH, good luck!
[edit] Yesterday I stumbled upon this great article explaining how to read Smalltalk code for Java/C++ developers.
check out my youtube tutorial series Squeak from the very start
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6601A198DF14788D&feature=viewall
I have read through "Squeak By Example" and I would say it is very good. I haven't seen "A Little Smalltalk" I think it might be a little outdated because it is from 1987.
after reading "Squeak By Example" I came across BotsInc it might be useful to go BotsInc even though it might seem a bit childish at first. Squeak By Example would be better to understand Smalltalk more fully.
this is a small squeak tutorial that might help too http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=39196
Stephan B Wessels has a Laser game project that was really useful for me when learning Smalltalk (in Squeak). You can follow and code along here: http://squeak.preeminent.org/tut2007/html/index.html
On to Smalltalk by Patrick Henry Winston is a succinct introductory book that you can get pretty cheaply used at http://www.amazon.com/On-Smalltalk-Patrick-Henry-Winston/dp/0201498278/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Objective C ORM

I am new to Objective C. In previous practice I accustomed to use ORM-like frameworks to access the database.
Could anyone please recommend any decent ORM framework for Objective C?
The following are for SQLite on iOS:
FMDB
chibi-ORM
sqlitepersistentobjects
UPDATE: DBAccess has now been replaced by the open source ORM Shark.
We have recently released a free to distribute and use ORM for Objective-c / iOS called DBAccess, which can be downloaded from http://db-access.org/, it has taken several years to develop and has now been deployed within many applications.
The documentation is fairly basic, but is slowly getting created/updated and we welcome community feedback and suggestions.
There is also a roadmap available to detail what features are going to be released in the up-coming releases.
It may not be for everyone, but I hope our effort will help some in the community.
NOTE, I have been alerted to the fact that it is bad form to promote your own products in a forum such as this, but I just wanted to add that I am only posting this in answer to the OP because I feel it does bring something useful to the table and I sincerely hope it will prove helpful to some people, even if it's not for everyone.
UPDATE: DBAccess has now been replaced by the open source ORM Shark. It is API compatible, and is available on github. http://sharkorm.com and https://github.com/sharksync/sharkorm
Thanks Adrian_H
There are a lot of alternatives out there, but in my opinion, nothing is better than Apple's Core Data. It is easy to use and implement, and is incredibly well documented (as everything that comes from Apple).
One excellent resource to learn Core Data quickly and use it right away is Paul Hegarty's CS193P videos available on iTunes U, which you can download using the following link:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=480479762
SQPersist is a Objective-C Persistence framework wrapper around SQLite based on FMDB :
Visit Github page
I totally recommend Realm. IMHO it is an excellent choice for its simplicity and performance.

Forum solution for Rails 3 and Devise?

I'm looking for a forum solution for a website I'm building. I'm using Devise and Rails 3, so does there exist any pluggable solutions?
What about 3rd party services?
The goal of Community, is to provide a simple, and easy to setup forum application without having to dictate how your site it setup.
https://github.com/gitt/community
You could build one yourself, you'll be surprised that it's not that time consuming, and you won't have to deal with the bloat that 3rd party solutions might come with. Here is a good place to start.
Savage Beast, Altered Beast and rBoard may be good starting points, but note that they are only for Rails 2.x afaics.
Note: rBoard has a Rails 3 branch but I have no idea how stable that is.

SimpleDB with Rails

Are there any good tutorials to learn basics of SimpleDB with Rails?
Using Amazon SimpleDB with Ruby on Rails
http://www.slideshare.net/martin.rehfeld/amazon-simple-db-07-feb-2008-rug-b
Ruby on Rails Tutorial Learn Rails by Example Michael Hartl
This is one of great tutorial that any new comer can follow. It's have some great examples that we can easily understand.

SQL query learning stuff

I want to learn SQL/TSQL queries.
Can somebody tell me how to learn it? I have learned syntax and some basics too, but I'm not finding any good stuff to make practice and learn it. Does anybody have any ideas?
I like sqlzoo, it's got a safe, interactive place to play around with the language. There are tutorials and also practice questions you can answer and see results with.
Download one of the free SQL databases, for example SQL Server Express or MySQL.
Learn the basics of relational databases.
Learn about database normalization.
Buy Alan Beaulieu's book Learning SQL.
Buy Kevin Kline's book SQL In A Nutshell.
For more advanced stuff, buy Celko's book SQL for Smarties.
Read everything written by Erland Sommarskog.
Play around with SQLzoo.
Using examples from the above resources, start practicing.
Write a personal application that is SQL-centric - this will give you a specific context for understanding the ideas and examples.
Try w3schools.com!! They have the most basic stuff to get a layman started.
You can find an interesting and interactive tutorial at http://sol.gfxile.net/galaxql.html