Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Progress, Not Perfection?

Today turned out to be slightly frustrating. I spent all day trying to get authentication going with Rails 2.x. As I mentioned in a prior post, quite a few differences exist in Rails 1.2.x and Rails 2.x. I'm trying to do things the new way - without really reading too much - and that is probably my downfall. The changes are enough that a quick read would certainly be beneficial.

On another front, let me discuss a little about eLance and RentACoder. I've posted some projects on both places lately and I think I've drawn an opinion that is simply that, my opinion. I'll probably continue to post development related projects on both sites, but I think RentACoder is going to consistently be the winner. That said, eLance has turned out to be a great resource for graphic design (web and other) as well as other professional services. Both are very useful. I continue to be blown away by the low rates and surprisingly great quality work that results from those low rates. This explains why I got laughed at for the rates I was seeking a few years back! :-)

Progress does continue to be made on several fronts. Things go in spurts. Everyone has opinions and it's fascinating to see how the same images affect different people. I'm really enjoying the process and look forward to the next steps after we get past this initial grunt-work.

To prove that I'm following the 4HWW - on page 200 and 201 he lists the names of a few call centers. Two of those companies have merged into one. I didn't place those calls directly, but had one of my partners start researching call centers for both inbound and outbound calling activities. Interestingly, he wasn't able to get in touch with ANY of them directly. Rather, voicemails were left and we are pending callbacks. Let's hope they check their voicemail more than once a week! I'm not impressed. A business that focuses on handling calls SHOULD answer their phones, don't you think?

Hope this helps!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have found consistently that "reading the manual" is often a best practice! I went through a similar exercise in moving from COM to .NET and reading Richter's "CLR via C#" (an advanced manual of sorts) made all the difference in me becoming very effective very quickly.

By the way, I checked out Rails and I want to be a Ruby programmer! What in your opinion are the best avenues for learning Ruby and Rails (e.g. books, websites, etc.)? Just watching some of the videos from the Rails site made me think of several ideas for web sites/businesses.

The Four Hour Trial said...

Hi Brick,

Yes, I should have known better but was really surprised at the number of major differences. I generally buy an unleashed book of sorts for learning a new technology but since I felt I already knew it I didn't buy anything further! Hah...

There a two books that are a MUST HAVE for Ruby and for Rails. If you would be nice enough to click on my little amazon thingy that would be great! They are featured there. I recommend all three of them, but the two must-haves are Agile Web Development and Programming Ruby.

You can also do screencasts, riding rails, etc... but the agile book is an easy read and will get you started quickly and the programming ruby book can serve as a reference and teach you nice tricks about ruby (which is VERY, VERY OOP driven).

When I started on this course a few years ago the only two books were the agile (you'll want the new version) and the programming ruby books. That made sense because Rails was still in Beta. Now, there is a whole host of books. But the books that continally get good feedback are those written by Dave Thomas (the author of both).

In addition, you'll want to frequent www.railsforum.com. It's a very active and helpful community.

BTW, when I switched from COM to .NET about 4 or 5 years ago, I bought the Unleashed book for C#. I like VS.NET but for web development I think Rails knocks the socks off of anything else out there (at least for RAD websites).

-M