Posted by Elliott Golden
When working on deadline-sensitive web development projects, it's common to solve problems and keep pushing forward without a full understanding of why a particular solution worked. Sure, the problem gets solved, and at the end of the day all is well. However, upon encountering a similar problem three months down the road I often realize that what previously worked, doesn't this time around. This is often due to my lack of in-depth understanding of the methods and tools I used to solve the original problem.
Through authoring this blog, I hope to lessen the symptoms of this problem. As I encounter programming issues and other web-dev related sticking points, I will write about my experience and research in the problem's domain. This process should help me retain information and better understand the technology I use on a daily basis. It may even help someone else.
As a Ruby on Rails developer, most of the tools I use, from my code editor to server technologies, are open source. Therefore, I rely on an array of community powered resources to stay informed and get problems solved. Other's tech blogs and screencasts would have to be near the top of the list—second only to a project's official documentation.
Listed are but a few of the resources I regularly follow.
Useful guides on using Rails:
RailsGuides
Amazing Rails centric screencasts by Ryan Bates:
Railscasts
Thoughtbot's company blog. This shop has brought the community some of
it's most pervasive Gems:
Thoughtbot
A listing of popular Ruby tools filtered by their Github popularity:
Ruby Toolbox
Jeremy McAnally's Rails oriented blog:
OMGBLOGLOL
A well rounded dev blog by Alan Skorkin:
Skorks
A Rails core member and Merb lead developer's blog:
Yehuda Katz
Ryan Daigle's ever helpful Rails blog:
Ryan's Scraps
Pratik Naik is a Rails core member, this is his blog:
has_many :bugs, :through => :rails
Weekly podcast from 5BY5 about the Ruby world:
The Ruby Show
Another weekly podcast from 5BY5 about dev in general:
The Dev Show
