What new trails would you like to see?

We’ve heard from a lot of you that you like the new beta Trails, so we’d like to make more.

What topics would you like to see covered?

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Any of the two functional languages Clojure or Haskell .

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OO principles, Refactoring, better way to write Rails(Form object, Query object, …)

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Dependency injection patterns are a big thing I’ve been trying to implement recently

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I like @samnang’s idea of form objects, especially with regards to has_many / belongs_to

You just got your wish!

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I would like to see more material on Service Oriented Architecture. Perhaps you can combine this with a refactoring trails, seeing as one while refactoring can identify service objects – especially in controllers.

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Yeah, an Architecture trail would be great. The different approaches to architecture and the pros and cons of each approach. I saw this before and definitely want to read it: The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Also a trail on programming languages. Not necessarily to become advanced in each programming language. But an approach similar to the architecture trail where we would understand the pros and cons of each language, what each language is used for, how are they designed, etc.

And lastly, a tech stack trail would be pretty cool. Again, similar to the ones above, it would be awesome to have material that would give us insight into different tech stacks(LAMP, MEAN, etc). And like the programming trail, this wouldn’t be learning the ins and outs of each tech stack, but a more high level approach. Why do people use them? Is it a personal preference or are there other reasons? Different tools for a different job? Pros/Cons? Etc.

Also I just want to say thanks for all the work you guys have been putting in. This is really awesome. I look forward to Friday to get the latest weekly iteration. I really like how you guys have been focusing on a specific thing, like Mockist vs Classic style in unit tests, and then diving straight into example. Keep up the great work!

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Elixir - seems like a trend in the ruby community…

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Or something on scalability in Rails apps. There are a host of common scalability problems web apps face, and then problems specific to Rails, as apps increase in complexity in different regards. And there seem to be so many different solutions. Lots of blogs and tutorials have great introductions on how to use different tools but don’t do a good job explaining when you use what.

I would like to see a trail on debugging a Rails app. Things like Pry and other tools and techniques to analyse errors and resolve them.

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Perhaps something more on the server admin spectrum/DevOps. What’s your server provisioning / deploy process like? What sorts of tools do you guys use?

I’ve been writing Rails applications for a while now, and this part of my job is byfar the most difficult for me. You wouldn’t believe the amount of time I’ve spent in the /var/log directory, but it’s such a great feeling when you finally get things to work like clockwork on your own and don’t have to fork over exorbitant amounts of money to Heroku…

No hard feelings Heroku <3

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100% agree with Cyle, deployment is by far the most difficult aspect of Rails development. For my latest project I was able to deploy it on a Digital Ocean VPS, but it took lots of trial and error. Things I would like to get more skilled at are, setting up a VPS with Ruby, Nginx and Postgres. Reducing the differences between server and development environment by setting up a local development environment with Vagrant.

How about a Rails Security Trail? There’s so many things developers can learn and it’s tough choosing where to start.

In case it helps, here’s some ideas for what could be covered: Rails Security Guide, OWASP Rails cheatsheet, Brakeman (and services like CodeClimate & PullReview that use it), Arachni Scanner, Rails Goat, and SecCasts.

Edited to add a couple of Rack middlewares: Rack Protection, Rack Attack

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Hello,

First of all, I think these trials are great.

I would love to see some along the lines of:

  • more in-depth refactoring (sandi metz rules to real production-like code)
  • cover all the new buzz classes. Form, Service, Presenter, Policy, Query, etc. more in depth and apply them in real applications. (code-climate suggestions)
  • practical design patterns
  • more complex testing / defining boundaries / testing microservices / contract testing … etc.
  • basic algorithms (searching / sorting, graph, etc)

As a side note: I am currently on the 30$ a month professional plan, but I have some questions about the 1-on-1 coaching plan. Is there anywhere where I can find out more information and ask some questions to a real person to get more information?

Thanks.

Intermediate → Advanced iOS/OSX with Swift would be good - there are already a number of basic Swift tutorials available elsewhere.

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I would love to see trails on development environment setup. I hear often about (and have experienced) the struggles people have managing gems/gemset, trying RVM and then realizing you should be using rbenv, dotfiles, etc.

I also see that thoughtbot has some open-source projects, under ‘Command Line’, that seem to be related to this. It would be awesome to see how you sanely manage your development environments.

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I cannot find the old trails, How do I get them?

You can see a complete list of trails at Learn Ruby and Rails Development - the link was temporarily lost as we move things around, but it will be restored in an upcoming deploy. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the confusion.

We’ve deployed a new Haskell trail! Learn Haskell Fundamentals | Haskell Online Tutorial by thoughtbot