How I got started on Ruby on Rails

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Background

So at first I did not program in ruby, as python already worked well for getting a fast prototype. However, watching the talks Sandi Metz gave did peak my interest, so Ruby wasn’t off the radar yet.

Ruby came back when I joined the commit-committee (the software-development team at the local study association where I study, almost 2 years ago) Let me take you on the journey, and how I shipped a feature in the first few days of starting on a Ruby on Rails project.

Constipated Koala

is the administration system for activities and such for the study association sticky. It lacked a richer interface for activity-hosts to summarize enrollments, and that is where the journey really started.

Summary feature

So it was the perfect feature to add as a beginner, as it wasn’t complicated (allow the user to pick the columns to export, and add an export option).

So here is how it looks before and after the change (all data shown is randomly generated :D):

ror-before.png

Figure 1: Activity enrollment panel before any changes

ror-after1.png

Figure 2: Activity enrollment panel after pressing summarize (as the new feature)

ror-after2.png

Figure 3: Activity enrollment panel after also ’cutting’ the last two columns away (by pressing the scissor icons on-top)

The next journey’s

By making that feature, the confidence for taking on issues grew, and code-reviewing and approving became my main interest for the project.