This is exactly what I did when I was trying to decide between the two. It really doesn't take long to work your way through the introductory tutorials to get a feel for which framework and language you prefer.
I've been learning Python and a bit of Django, and it has taken me a lot longer than 2 man-weeks to get to grips with it. I can't imagine that I would be able to learn enough Ruby to give Rails a good shot in two weeks.
I'm absolutely sure that there are many developers out there that can pick these frameworks up that quickly, but I'm equally sure that there are plenty of developers who "aren't that talented".
I don't want to sound pretentious, but were you coding >6 hours a day?
Languages are as much a process of thinking as they are a string of instructions for a computer. If you think in object-orientation you'll learn object-oriented languages very fast. Likewise, if you know a language like Lisp you'll learn man of its descendants in the same family of language quickly.
I work full time and program when I'm not working, and I'm often surprised at the improvements and iterations I can make in (relatively) short periods of time. It's the same way you can become fluent in a spoken language in 3 months [1]. Talent isn't relevant after the first week - raw determination is.
That said, you're right, you shouldn't expect to be a capable programmer in a language after just 2 weeks, but don't be so hard on yourself that such an accomplishment is impossible.
By man-weeks I mean 40-60 hours effort per "week". I think that some developers can "learn Django in a week or two from scratch", but I don't think most newbies can.
Well for newbies coming to the table, there sure are a lot of concepts they'll have to pickup. Same for PHP developers. In all of these frameworks, there is the concept of routes, data models, views/templates, controller actions, etc.
So learning one framework definitely helps out in others. The biggest hurdle for me (coming from Perl CGI then PHP to Java 10 years ago) was that I was no longer accessing a "page"... I was accessing an action in a controller. I could use views as a template and REUSE those views for other things. The "one page for each action" paradigm became dumb after that.
Most newbies can fight through the demo "blog apps" rails/django tutorials and still have no idea what they're doing. But doing them multiple times until one is comfortable with the pieces is probably more beneficial.
Lastly. Learn the actual language. I love Ruby because it's a joy to use. I hate Python. It's not a bad language I PERSONALLY don't enjoy it. So Rails was a no-brainer. I enjoy Scala, so Play Framework was a no-brainer. I (I'll admit) have fun writing Javascript, so Node.js with Express.js is fun to write.
After learning a couple of (different) languages, learning the new one is easy. So easy that it usually equates learning its standard library. So learning either Django or Rails, if you are moderately experienced developer shouldn't really take more than a few weeks.
Of course, learning the first language is challenging.
I have become proficient in about 10-15 languages over the years, but Python is sufficiently different from all of them that 2 weeks is not enough to give Django a fair trial. I'm sure Rails is the same. Knowing 80x86 assembler, Commodore 64 basic and Amos only go so far, but maybe knowing Python it is easier to switch to Ruby.
It is good advice; it just isn't time-effective to do a thorough job. By the time you've gotten through the tutorials and maybe built a couple simple sites, you've probably gotten to the beginning of understanding how it works, but you have yet to do basically anything that would be considered working with the framework as it applies to what you'd actually do on a real project. You might understand the very basics, but extrapolating that into "this is how working with it actually is" carries the very real possibility of a rude awakening.
How thorough does an evaluation need to be? I'd suggest that doing a few things less-thorough than a real project is sufficient to get a feeling for the framework. There are real projects done in both frameworks, there isn't going to be a point where you find some pitfall and go, "welp, looks like we have to start over in Rails" or whatever.
Ugh... as a marketing guy trying to build an awesome, lasting brand, I hate these comments. We talk about it a lot internally and do a lot of coaching to make sure we're not too aggressive. It is a balance though - growth and aspirational goals to be a meaningful long-term business coupled with wanting to be a healthy participant in our community... Sounds like on occasion we've failed.. Please know we're listening to feedback like this - it doesn't mean we're going to stop contacting people who use our product, but it does mean we care, and will work to REFINE our commercial tactics.
Yes, please. I am very interested in this. I feel as though I've only scratched the surface of what ST2 can do even though I've been using it for the last year and experimented with writing my own plugins.
I'd also love to see a "cheat-sheet" for shortcut keys.
To be honest, my ebook is on initial stage, but I'm actively working on it. If you want to track its progress, here's its repository on GitHub: https://github.com/elomarns/sublime-coding
Anyway you can find a great cheat sheet on the links below:
While I love the idea of homeschooling and unschooling, I can't quite figure out how people do this while still managing to pay their bills. Wouldn't this, in essence, take up a significant portion of your day, preventing you from working?
My mom stayed home with us while Dad worked (now that we're all grown she got a new job, the sort that has a commute and is counted in GDP). I think the other homechool families in the area did the same thing.
This being HN, I suppose another option would be for one parent to run some sort of e-business that allows them to have an opposite schedule and take turns working vs being with the kids.
Good question (hence my upvote). I have been the home-educating parent, sporadically employed for money, as my children have been growing. Observing them pursue their interests has given me new career ideas, which I like better than my former career.
It's an extension of how you look after infants isn't it. If you have kids then how did you look after them before they reached school age? There you go.
If you chose not to look after them then I guess your question still stands.
I do it and I am able to work from home most of the time as an engineer. To do a smash up classical education job teaching your 8 yr old to speak fluent Latin will take 4 hrs a day. Then you spend 8 hrs at work while they run around wild, work on projects, or whatever. Teach them how to cook at an early age and now you have freed up even more hours.
Some freelancers will take the kids with them as they travel about the world on assignment. That's an education in itself.
Anyone else confused by this opening statement: "Python 3 has been out for about a year at this point, and so far Django hasn't really started to move towards it (at least at a first glance). However, Django has already begun the long process towards moving to Python 3[...]"?
I think the you're taking it a bit out of context, you should read the whole post and you should be able to comprehend what he is suggesting - though, I do agree it does not flow very well.
The gist of it; he says that it looks like not a lot is going on towards Py3000 migration, but after further investigations they have a long term strategy which is not first apparent. He then goes on to outline the migration strategy.
One way I've always dealt with the repetitive bits in my tests is to break out the offending code into separate utility type methods that can then be called by the test itself (or even multiple tests) as needed.
These methods could themselves also contain assertThis, assertThat, as needed to ensure they're functioning as expected as well.
Another way I've done it is to have tests calling other test methods themselves. i.e., something like:
testFoo(self):
# Do some test here.
self.assertTrue(....)
testBar(self):
# Test that Foo works for logged in user as well
self.client.login(username='joe', password='abc')
self.testFoo()
self.assertTrue(...)
Thanks for the encouragement. This is my first open source project, and I mainly wrote it because I was disappointed with Djapian's Xapian interface and was quite impressed with Haystack.
Originally, I was planning on using Whoosh for the backend, but quickly ran into issues with locked files when deploying to a live server.
Anyways, I'd love to hear any comments and feedback you may have after you've given the code a try.
I was using haystack with whoosh and running into the same problem. I was waiting for some updates on that, but I think I'll check this out first. Thanks for sharing the code.
This is exactly what I did when I was trying to decide between the two. It really doesn't take long to work your way through the introductory tutorials to get a feel for which framework and language you prefer.