The Rails 3 Ropes Course
This 3 hour course will be presented in several stages of presentation and activity. Each stage’s presentation will detail one or more new topics by using slides, demonstrations, and screencasts. Following each of these presentations, you will then take the ropes and get your hands dirty, solving code challenges and tasks that will reinforce those concepts. During the course the Envy Labs team will be right behind you to answer any questions that you may have.
This is a very hands-on course and we expect that you will not only walk away with a working Rails 3 application, but also a more thorough understanding of the new framework and how Rails 3 will become an integral part of your future web applications.
To get the most out of our training you’ll want to do the following three things:
1. Make sure you have Ruby 1.8.7 or 1.9.2-head installed, our labs should work on either. If you’re on OSX We highly recommend you install RVM if you don’t already have it: http://rvm.beginrescueend.com. Once you have it running, have it get Ruby 1.9.2-head and maybe even Ruby 1.8.7. i.e. “rvm install 1.9.2-head” and “rvm install 1.8.7”
2. Download the following labs file: (31 mb)
http://blog.envylabs.com/Rails_3_Ropes_Course.zip
3. Open the Lab 1 folder and do the prerequisites and step 1 in the README. This will ensure that you can run Rails 3, and you’ll be ready to learn and work at the tutorial. Please don’t be tempted to solve any labs yet, they’ll be much easier to do when you have the reference material.
If you have any issues (and google won’t help you solve them), try creating a new gemset using RVM and installing all libraries from scratch (if you’re on osx). If you still can’t figure things out come to our session 30 minutes early and we’ll help you troubleshoot.
Gregg Pollack
Envy Labs
Gregg Pollack works at Envy Labs, where he produces a podcast, creates educational screencasts, and develops websites with Rails. He also runs the Ruby Hero Awards, organizes the Orlando Ruby Users Group, and is also sometimes known as the Ruby on Rails guy in the “Rails vs” commercials or the “C” in MVC.
Nathaniel Bibler
Envy Labs
Nathaniel Bibler is a software developer at Envy Labs and co-hosts the Ruby5 Podcast. He is a long-time member and presenter in the Orlando Ruby Users Group and releases or contributes to several open source projects in the Ruby and Rails community.
Thomas Meeks
Envy Labs
Thomas loves to code, especially when he gets to dive into the deep technical details. To him, there is little more fun than a late night spent grokking the algorithms in complex software. In addition to his software development experience, Thomas is a total Linux geek and has several years experience bending servers to his indomitable will.
Jacob Swanner
Envy Labs
Jacob was previously trapped as a .NET developer before he was liberated by Envy Labs. These days he spends his time writing beautiful Ruby code and hacking internet telephony applications (a.k.a. Cloud Communication). When his head is not in the clouds he’s usually thinking about his next travel adventure.
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Comments
Great job guys. Your hard work in preparation for this really showed, and the execution was great. I took away some good knowledge from this one.
This was easily the best session of the week. The envy labs team was well prepared, very organized, and reacted quickly to issues with segfaults that people were having due to a recent 1.9.2 upgrade issue with rails3, as well as having DVD of a virtual box environment for anyone showing up that had issues or incorrect software.
Really an incredibly well done tutorial. The best i’ve ever attended, and i’ve been through many of them. Good break up with hands on sessions, a team of helpers, walking through the issues related to the rails 3 upgrade. I’m having my whole team walk through the slides and tutorial labs!
Wish I had attended it based on what I have heard
Rails 3 Ropes session was a great way to start the RailsConf 2010 for me personally. Really helped and what I will take back, will help others back home.
This session was awesome and so helpful. The labs were easy enough and taught me everything I was confused about. Thank you, Envy Labs!
Great session. Clearly very well thought out. Really enjoyed the labs and online resources provided.
Very good. Labs could be polished a little further perhaps, but very well-structured presentation highlighting important points.
Well organized, easy to follow, great format and timing. Just excellent!
Very good job—EnvyLabs really demonstrated how to organize and put together materials for a tutorial.
I have to say that I expected a little bit more “gregg pollack way” tutorial, which means a FUNNY tutorial, it wasn’t, but it still was very very good, please, gregg don’t lose your sense of humor.
The Rails 3 Ropes Course was AWESOME!!
The Rails 3 Ropes Course was AWESOME. So well-paced. (Learn a bit. Use it. Learn a bit. Use it.) Wish more were like this.
Very well organized with everyone on point. The Envy Labs team did a fantastic jobs.
This was a great session! I would have loved to see an afternoon session that delved deeper into many of the same topics that we’ll use everyday.
Fantastic tutorial. Clearly Gregg and team did a labor of love getting ready for today. I really appreciate it.
As far as prerequisites, everyone needs to have built at least one Rails application. ;-)
In other-words it IS suitable for beginners, yes.
What are the prerequisites for this course? Is this course suitable for beginning Ruby/Rails programmers?