How Would a Real Expert Learn Rails?
‘The magic thing about Rails is when I looked at it the first time, I knew how it worked because I already knew Ruby really well.
I saw all the metaprogramming tricks; they were almost transparent, looking at it. But I didn't know you could put it together that way and create something so expressive and succinct.’
— Chad Fowler, episode 1 of The Ruby Hangout (0:41:48)An expert doesn't cut corners. They learn the fundamentals. They learn deeply.
What's Between You and Being an Expert Senior Engineer?
A lot of what separates 'just a developer' from 'senior developer' is independence — the ability to dive deeply into a technical problem and, with exploration, get to the right answer.
A lot of technical problems in the Ruby and Rails world require going into, or through, framework code. Whether that framework is Ruby on Rails, Hanami, Sinatra or something else, it's important to be able to understand how frameworks and applications operate.
Nothing teaches you about frameworks like writing a framework. It's not any more magic than any other coding. It's experience and work. Specifically, it's experience and work in writing and debugging a framework.
Unfortunately, that experience can be difficult to get at work unless you've done it before. It's another "you can't do the work until you have the experience" catch-22's that you've seen before.
Here's one way to break that deadlock: don't wait for work to tell you to build a framework. Just go build one. Rebuilding Rails can help.
Build Your Framework
With Rebuilding Rails you'll build a complete Ruby MVC framework from an empty directory. Your framework will be structured like Rails, using the same architecture and the same metaprogramming tricks. You'll learn the magic behind Rails. You'll finish each system and solidify your knowledge with structured exercises. And you'll get the gut-level understanding that only a framework builder has.
To be an expert, learn the fundamentals. Then you can pick up not just Rails, but any framework you want. Rebuilding Rails will show you the tricks and where to start reading the source code.
When you've built these systems, you get a sort of X-ray vision into the framework. You've had that before with code that you built for yourself. Wouldn't you like the same thing for Rails, Sinatra or your framework of choice?
Future-Proof Mastery
At some point you understand basic coding, and it's time to take on more responsibility. At some point, you need to be ready to take responsibility for larger, uglier bugs and features. And so at some point, you need to master dealing with framework code.
To master Rails, but also Rack and other Ruby frameworks, you need to work with the underlying concepts. That means knowing how an MVC framework is structured. It also means metaprogramming. And you should know a few different approaches for how to build different components of that framework.
No book can fully prepare you. That takes practice. But Rebuilding Rails can start you on that practice and show you how to practice. Nobody understands frameworks like an engineer who has built a framework. That, dear reader, could be you.
