Advice on how to go through the Trails?

Hi everybody! I’m new here.

I’m coming to Rails from a functional PHP background. I think that’s a nice way of saying most of my day job is upkeep on a 10 year old spaghetti code PHP application for a large financial company.

Most of the things in the trails are new to me. I had to learn some ruby to tackle the first ruby trail. Then I had to move to the testing trail to learn how to write some tests for this first ruby application. I think after that, I should spend some time on the vim trail to become more efficient moving around the documents.

Is there a suggested way to move around the trails? Is there suggested reading or tutorials for someone like me to catch up?

Am I going about this the right way?

I’m curious how others in similar situations have moved through the features on Upcase.

Best,

Bob Cavezza

Specifically with the Vim trail, I’d think you’d be able to at least do some of it in parallel with the other trails and use what you’re learning in Vim to work on those trails.

@rcavezza I think focus is really helpful when doing the Trails. Working on one trail and acquiring mastery of the skills and techniques in that trail will help you get comfort with the knowledge, and you can then apply some of that knowledge to your next trail.

If you’re using Git or can start using Vim at work, then those trails are things you can start practicing every day while and after you do the trails even if your day job is holding legacy PHP code together (some skills are universal!). I think some of the lessons from Refactoring would be useful in any language.

I’m familiar with the feeling of working on something at your day job and wanting to acquire a skill that you don’t get to use at work (that’s why I joined Upcase!). In that case, Test-Driven Rails might be a welcome distraction and an opportunity to do something completely different than what you do at work.