MP:Mediaprojekte

Ruby on Rails Boot Camp Germany by Big Nerd Ranch

Last Week i attend the first Ruby on Rails Bootcamp, organized by The Big Nerd Ranch, in Germany. This was an awesome programming holiday with a total focus how to roll your own ruby on rails application.

How i got on the Rail…

About two month ago i started looking at Ruby on Rails, this oh so agile and clean Ruby Framework. Like a lot of people i got inspired by some "You can build everything in 10 min"-Screencasts. At that time i wasn´t aware that there is so much more behind the Rails Idea. So i spent my first days on Rails programming some tutorials to get into it.

Two weeks ago Stefanie Höfling(the German Organizer) contacted me and asked me if i wanted to attend this Rails Bootcamp. I looked into the class specs and directly signed up … not knowing that this would totally change my view on programming.

In this article i want to give a short review of the class to hopefully spread the word by sharing my experience.
 

1. Day

After we arrived on Sunday we got to know each other during dinner. We were a group of 7 people (picture comming) with different pogramming backgrounds and experience. The class was held in English by this kick-ass rails-programming-core-team-member-guy Marcel Molina jr.

The first thing i was surprised of, was me being the only one using a windooze laptop… I quickly realized that the windows shell really sucks and that textmate is a usefull editor …stop pocking on me,  you got me convinced that a mac can really be very usefull.

On Monday we instantly hit the rail with:

• basic´s of the Ruby language
• irb the ruby shell
• Rails Active Record
• Rails Migrations
• Rails Action Pack
• Rails Application Structure
• Rails Helpers
• Rails Templates

Besides the above points we started to develop a little blogging application, which guided us the way. After a heavy lunch we had a walk into the vinyards of the monastery… I had not gotten so much oxygen for a couple of weeks. So in the evening we all were pretty exhausted a quickly went to bed

2. Day

The day started with something really impressing … Testing. I always thought of tests as being something annoying and difficult. Well it is not anymore. In fact it can be really fun writing test.. at least if have such a good drill instructor like Marcel Molina right at your side.

Our Blogging App slowly grew while we covered the following subjects :

• Validations
• Routes
• Layouts
• Partials
• Rake tasks

In the evening we took a look into the monastery and tasted some vine… noo we did not get wasted, behaved wild and danced on the table, since we had to keep our brains online.

3. Day

We woke up with AJAX, i could hardly believe that it´s so damn easy to ajaxifiy your Rails app … what a clean integration. This subject would need an extra article so i just keep it short since there are 2 more day´s to come.
Other Topics where:

• rjs-templates
• debugging
• Performance
• Request Filters
• Lifecycle Callbacks

4. Day

Everything to xml? Well just check out those rxml templates. We build an rss feed for our blog in no time and again I was blown away by the ease of use.

The second big topic was dedicated to the usage of ActionMailer. I guess i´ll have to rebuild my php Spam-App with this technique.

5. Day

On the last day Marcel introduced us to the magics of Capistrano. Holy Sh.. , deployment at it´s best. One shell command and you are done.

Summary

This Bootcamp brainwashed my thoughts and knowledge about software development. Marcel Molina jr. did an awesome job in teaching us the secrets of Ruby on Rails and gave us deep insights of the software development techniques at 37Signals. He simply pumped up our brains and i hope i get to share some thoughts with him again. It was so intense that i dreamt every night of more or less stupid applications. The monastary is an exellent place to forget about the real world and totally concentrate on studying. The only thing everybody complaint about was the massive food attack. It was so good, we just could not resist… luckiely my fridge is empty so i can recover and get ridd of the gained weight.

The BootCamp did not only get me start on using Rails but it also got clear to me that using Rails means nearly automaticly adapting techniques like Agile Development, Test-Driven Deleopment, DRY (Don´t repeat yourself), MVC-Patterns. I heard of those before but wasn´t aware that they could be so easily used and stuffed into one framework. So i have to review my german engineering skills to catch up to our american friends. maybe i name my next app v-dub soft and make one of those commercials …

Suddenly I feel so agile …