

Show HN: Learning Ruby on Rails by creating an app - pocha
http://www.codelearn.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial/1/Learning-Rails-basics/1/Ruby-on-rails-for-beginners

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nitochi
Hi, a couple of suggestions here: 1\. Landing page. It is not very clear for
me what is the basic "free" course. Will I be able to go all the way up to
building my app with the free one? If you write it as Course 1: RoR Basics,
you lead me to think you will only tell me how to define variables and then
try to charge me for it. If the case is that you can build all the first app
for free, I would change the wording to: Course 1: Your first app, or
something like that.

2\. Once I click on take the course, you redirect me to a page where I only
find text. Wait...this is not what I wanted...bail. I think that once you
redirect, the first thing you should see is the course (or the console), so
you can start exploring and falling in love with RoR.

3\. There is way too much content in that second page...it feels more like a
blog post. I would put a link to that content in the main page under three
small links: Why codelearn? Why Ruby on Rails? Do I need Ruby? or something
like that.

4\. Most important: Why is all the scary code in the first class? If I am a
newbie and I see that, I would think its way to complicated! Start with
something easy...there is a reason why "Hello World" is the first thing you
learn in any language out there.

5\. Also, I cannot try the things as a anonymous user (I don't know about
registered ones), because the console is nowhere in the page!

Good luck guys, I wish you the best.

~~~
pocha
Point 1 & 2 taken. I agree to your observation. The user should be shown 'Aha'
moment ASAP & we are only delaying it which is bad.

Point 3 - guess this is classic example of we founders trying to show the
philosophy as the first thing to the user. While he/she wants to learn RoR.
Guess we should create a separate link 'Philosophy' on the main page & link
the content there. Something like <https://supportbee.com/> .

Point 4 - guess the command out is too long (especially the rails new part)
which is making it look long.

Point 5 - a linux user is needed at the backend & hence there is a signup
process for that. We need to figure out a sub-optimal way to provide console
access to non-signed up users as well like what Codecademy etc do on their
main page.

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alexandrovich
It would be nice if the images in the documentation were full-sized (they're
just uselessly small), otherwise this is quite an effective way to learn.

~~~
pocha
I agree. Some of the images are plain wrong actually. They show screenshot of
older version of Codelearn Playground. We will fix them.

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smadaan
Nice one, sir ji. Good luck with the upcoming launch!

~~~
pocha
Thanks Saurabh. Pleasantly surprised to find you here :).

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CBizzle
Nice! But what's up with all the typos?

~~~
thejosh
Feels like it was translated from something..

~~~
pocha
Our bad. Being non-native speakers, guess the grammar is bad. Please excuse.

~~~
thejosh
I really admire anyone who is willing to write up good documentation.

What is your native language?

~~~
pocha
Its Hindi (national language of India) for me & Kannada (a local language here
in India) for my co-founder. We are reasonably good with spoken English but
guess the written part is reasonably bad. We are on a lookout for a good tech
guy who likes what we are doing, loves to write & can help us with the content
creation & proof-reading.

