Asp Forum - How Many hours in A day

Zayd Abdullah

3/11/2009 7:26:00 PM

I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.

I'm learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.

Thanks
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

15 Answers

Kyle Schmitt

3/11/2009 8:05:00 PM

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Zayd Connor <devrubygem@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
>
> I'm learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
> should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
>
> Thanks
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-....

I'd say that varies quite a bit by person. All depends on time,
personality, (I hate to use this phrase but) learning style, and most
of all, how much you're getting into it.

I've spent many gleeful 14 hour sessions learning some things that
I've never had to revisit, because it stuck. Then again I've spent
plenty of torturous 1-2 hour study sessions to make other material
stick. And no, it wasn't necessarily because it was boring or
non-computer related either.

I'd say plan on taking 30 minute breaks every few hours. If you start
cutting them short because you're dying to get back to it, spend all
day. When you start taking the whole break, or lengthening it, it's
time to let it go for a few hours, if not the day!

--Kyle

Yun Huang Yong

3/11/2009 10:00:00 PM

Zayd Connor wrote:
> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :)
I only started using Ruby a couple of months ago and my recommendation
is to experiment to find your own comfortable effort level. When I
first picked up The Ruby Programming Language (the O'Reilly book) I
found it really readable, and I enjoyed the succinct examples. As a
result I read a little too much of it up front and even though
everything made sense as I read it, I couldn't remember much of the
detail when it came around to actually writing code. :)

I think as with learning any language you need a real goal (task) to
achieve. Its a bit tedious to just read and play with language syntax &
idioms just for the heck of it and with a real goal you can read a bit,
code a bit, and discover what you really need to read about next.

The downside to this approach is there are language features that can
greatly simplify your design & code if you know about them so if you
only learn on demand then you do run the risk of missing these. But
that's not so bad - its happened to me a few times and I just go back
and re-factor things as I learn about new features. You have to accept
that you can't know everything from the start.

I think it took around a two weeks to get comfortable with Ruby to the
point where I feel I could mostly do what I want without looking up
documentation for every line of code. Now I'm wrestling with RSpec. :)

Getting familiar with gems & RubyForge, ruby-doc.org, and the "fastri"
gem will help a lot.
> I'm learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
> should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
>
That's a good idea, IMHO.

HTH,
yun

--
Yun Huang Yong
yun@nomitor.com ...nom nom nom
--

pjb

3/11/2009 11:12:00 PM

Zayd Connor <devrubygem@gmail.com> writes:

> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.

Quand on aime, on ne compte pas!

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__

Phlip

3/11/2009 11:32:00 PM

Zayd Connor wrote:
> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.

On your own, unpaid, you should cram for days. Behave like videogame addicts,
with adult diapers, stacks of canned food next to you, etc. The point is to burn
the techniques into your brain.

On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don't program. You owe it to your
velocity to keep fresh for your job!

Paul Fraser

3/12/2009 12:11:00 AM

Phlip wrote:
> Zayd Connor wrote:
>> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
>> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
>> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
>> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
>> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
>> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
>
> On your own, unpaid, you should cram for days. Behave like videogame
> addicts, with adult diapers, stacks of canned food next to you, etc.
> The point is to burn the techniques into your brain.
>
> On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don't program. You owe it
> to your velocity to keep fresh for your job!
>
>
That's not what Zed says :-)
http://vimeo.c...

Paul Fraser

Jeff Schwab

3/12/2009 12:20:00 AM

Phlip wrote:
> Zayd Connor wrote:
>> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
>> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill.

I'm not a ruby expert, but programming is a lifelong endeavor. There is
no amount of time you can spend, beyond which your task will be "done."
The more time you spend -- really, the more actual problem-solving you
do on your own -- the better you'll get.

> On your own, unpaid, you should cram for days.

9-5 developers are universally incompetent. People who don't code for
fun never get to explore new design styles, nor cutting-edge
technologies. Coding after work is great, specifically because you're
allowed to fail.

> Behave like videogame
> addicts, with adult diapers, stacks of canned food next to you, etc. The
> point is to burn the techniques into your brain.

That's a good way to burn out.

> On the job, work 8 hours a day, go home, and don't program. You owe it
> to your velocity to keep fresh for your job!

.... says someone who frequently posts code on Usenet. :) Seriously, a
little after-work coding serves as a mental palate-cleanser; a sort of
aperitif for the mind. For me, it's an important part of keeping fresh.
YMMV.

Robert Klemme

3/12/2009 8:05:00 AM

2009/3/11 Zayd Connor <devrubygem@gmail.com>:
> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who is new
> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill. Say
> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when running
> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours in the
> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.

Now you got six responses already and all are quite different. I think
it totally depends on the person, whether it's work time or leisure
time, what knowledge you got already, what your learning type is, how
much time you can spare. I do not believe anybody can answer this
honestly from a distance - what works good for some, might not work
for you.

> I'm learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
> should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.

That's probably a good idea because it will help you understand what's
going on when you have to loot at Rails source code and the logic has
to be implemented in Ruby anyway.

Kind regards

robert

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end

Robert Dober

3/12/2009 10:10:00 AM

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Pascal J. Bourguignon
<pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>
> Quand on aime, on ne compte pas!

Nous aimes-tu?

Robert
>
> --
> __Pascal Bourguignon__
>
>

--
There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called
WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get
to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the
animal they love the most, and stay there. ~ A.A. Milne (from
Winnie-the-Pooh)

Eleanor McHugh

3/12/2009 11:51:00 AM

On 12 Mar 2009, at 08:05, Robert Klemme wrote:
> 2009/3/11 Zayd Connor <devrubygem@gmail.com>:
>> I have a very simple ? How many hours in a day should someone who
>> is new
>> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill.
>> Say
>> two hours in the morning and two in the evening? Sometimes when
>> running
>> across problems that two hours can easily turn into 5 :) To the
>> professional Ruby programmers that read this post, how many hours
>> in the
>> day did you take time out to code when climbing up that hill.
>
> Now you got six responses already and all are quite different. I think
> it totally depends on the person, whether it's work time or leisure
> time, what knowledge you got already, what your learning type is, how
> much time you can spare. I do not believe anybody can answer this
> honestly from a distance - what works good for some, might not work
> for you.

Probably the best general advice is: code until you get bored and then
stop until you feel interested again. For some of us the former can be
a very long time indeed whilst the latter might be a very brief break,
but this really will depend on how much someone likes bashing their
head against brick walls.

Also never be afraid to put a problem aside for a couple of days and
do something completely unrelated: procrastination is a programmer's
best friend :)

>> I'm learning Rails and Ruby at the same time and sometimes I think I
>> should just get comfortable with Ruby first before diving into Rails.
>
> That's probably a good idea because it will help you understand what's
> going on when you have to loot at Rails source code and the logic has
> to be implemented in Ruby anyway.

Yep, knowing the language you're coding in is often much more
important than knowing the framework you're coding to as it opens up
so many new possibilities for solving problems.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-...
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

Marc Heiler

3/12/2009 2:37:00 PM

> How many hours in a day should someone who is new
> to ruby or programming spend learning and coding without over kill.

If it is just for fun, 1-2 hours. Not more. And to have fun is very
important.

You will learn slowly anyway. Also ask for feedback - often other people
have solutions which may be better in the long run.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

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How Many hours in A day