From: Robert Klemme Date: 2011-02-09T19:05:55+09:00 Subject: Re: Totally lost in learning Ruby On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Hilary Bailey wrote: > What I want to create is a product that is computer accessible, that is > similar to a teacher's Grade Keeper, but goes farther by adding defined > info from principals, guidance counselors, lunch provision for students, > etc.. The reason for this approach is that this will now allow more > complete view of a what impacts a child. I consider it an interesting question (although completely off topic here) whether all these aggregated figures can give clear information which school works good and which works bad. I'd say you need a *lot* of data from various sources to even get close to this goal. And before you reach your goal you might hit some privacy legislation wall... > Therefore, the daily entry of data from all participants (teachers, > principals, security, janitors, etc...) will give an analyzer a wider > set of defined parameter inputed data to access, then analyze. OK, so a web based solution is probably most appropriate since it avoids having to install software on a lot of systems. But don't forget to write the complete requirements list! > The > problem is where to start. I read a book on Ruby, some say that my next > step is to play with scripts, alter some commands and then test such > adjustments. The problems is to follow a logical sequence of learning. > For example, since i use Windows 7, have installed Ruby 1.9.2 p.136 and > Rails, Vim7.2, and LibreOffice 3.3. and saved info to htmldog.com from > which HTML & CSS can be learned. > > I know very well that it will take me some time, however, now where do I > start? Should I star with htmldog tutorials, then open Rails along with > vim7.2, then the next stage will be to explore SQlite, then MYSQL, while > having LibreOffice Base as a source of reference? Start with the basics. If you are new to programming, you need to learn to program (incidentally this is the title of a tutorial by Chris Pine). After you understood that you can tackle HTML (and CSS - web design in general) and finally SQL basics (and the relational model and data modeling). Then you can pull it all together and look at Rails (or any other web framework). With this order you will be able to write programs first, then write programs showing HTML pages and learn how the web browser interacts with the web server. Then you will know how to model persistent data and can use that with Rails et al. Good luck! robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/