

Show HN: What Have You Done Today that is Kick Ass? - forgingahead
http://www.didyoukickass.com/

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dcpdx
Love the site; I too am in the process of making the transition from being
just the "sales guy" into a semi-competent tech guy. Right now I'm paying a
dev to build my MVP in Rails but have taught myself HTML, CSS, and am learning
Javascript. I'd be curious to hear which resources you used to get proficient
in Rails--I've checked out a little bit of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby,
Hackety Hack, and a few random tutorials but haven't immersed myself
completely into learning the language just yet. Do you have any suggestions
for steps to take to get to the level you're currently at? Also, about how
many hours did it take? I'm still working my day job but learning/coding
nights and on the weekends.

Also some suggestions:

-Include a truncated list of the latest submissions on the home page and put the input field on top, so users can see what else is being posted without having to click through (although I do appreciate the simplicity and I'm sure you debated that).

-When you get some time, put a basic logo together. Doesn't have to be too complicated, just some typeface/color tweaking a la TFLN.

-Include option to tweet out individual submissions (even if you're not the poster), maybe include custom hastag like #kickass or something.

Cheers and good luck!

~~~
forgingahead
Cheers, thanks for the comments and feedback. Am definitely looking to improve
features and functionality so will do so in a bit.

I can't remember how I decided to learn Ruby on Rails specifically (versus
another language/framework), but I left my corporate job in Jan and started to
seriously learn a week later. These are some of the resources I used in
relative order:

1\. <http://www.tryruby.org/> 2\.
<http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/beginning#top> 3\.
<http://railsforzombies.org/labs> 4\. <http://railscasts.com/> (For specific
video tutorials) 5\. <http://railsforum.com/index.php> (For specific
questions) 6\. <http://www.stackoverflow.com>

I honestly picked up most of the basics from the Michael Hartl tutorial
(second link), and then through googling specific features I wanted to add. I
did a bunch of long-walks-and-turnarounds (eg: tried to put together my own
authentication system for a week before I discovered Devise), but going from
nothing to some basic knowledge took me around 3 weeks of plugging away.

I was (am still) working on a completely unrelated startup, so Kickass was a
dedicated project initially but then became a side thing over the next few
months. I've just finished the MVP on my own for my startup platform which is
much more sophisticated than Kick Ass.

So it's been about 5 months, but about 3 weeks initially just pushing hard,
and then bits and pieces over the next few months. I spent about 5 days a few
weeks ago just focused on Kick Ass to finish it with the current features, and
then spent another few days figuring out the infrastructure stuff (setting up
the server, deploying to prod, database basics, etc).

But it's extremely simple - knowing what I know now, I could redo it from
scratch in a few days. But if you're starting from zero like I did, then it'll
be a few weeks of hard slog before things start making sense.

Definitely doable, and completely worth it - did some sales stuff this week
demo'ing the startup MVP I built myself, and that's been a really good
feeling. I know nothing about design or CSS, so once the functionality for the
MVP was done I grabbed a theme off themeforest.net

Good luck with your learning! Hope to see your project here soon.

------
forgingahead
This is my first attempt at a Rails app - non-technical background, got tired
of being just the "idea/sales" fellow so decided to start learning. (though I
have a new appreciation for the skills I do have, and for all the tech guys I
harassed with silly questions over the years).

Please let me know all comments/feedback, would love to hear them all. Some of
the code that I look at now makes me feel I could have done a cleverer job,
but hey, next time.

Clickable: <http://www.didyoukickass.com>

