Learning RoR + MEAN for higher chances of getting a job

Career Advice
1

I am currently working my way through colt steele’s udemy course and the free RoR course as well . Don’t have a job yet so what better way to spend time. More jobs lean towards rails and the mean stack is gaining pace which is why I desperately want to learn both.
I would love to get an insight from guys who have knowledge in both domains.

2

Rails is pretty great, but unless you’re already familiar with Ruby, I would advise you focus on Node at first. Learning backend frameworks is more than just learning some API. If you get comfortable in Node with the request/response cycle, setting and reading headers, CORS, database access, organization, and testing, these skills will directly translate to your experience with Rails. Rails, on the other hand, keeps a lot of stuff behind the curtain, which can hinder your initial learning. If you’re trying to learn Ruby and wrap your head around the things Rails hides with convention, it’ll slow you down overall. It won’t take you long to get the basics - spend a month with Node before diving into Rails.

A few notes on Rails:

  • I hate testing in Rspec and think it should be avoided, but it’s the only testing library you’ll find any tutorials for. Life is pain. :sob:
  • Most of the information you’ll find about Rails assumes that you want it for the whole stack, including the front end. Writing JavaScript for a strictly Rails project is much different from what we’re used to here. Rails 5 includes the API mode, which scaffolds a purely backend project so you can more easily create a RESTful API rather than a whole stack. Then, you can build a client app any way you wish. I much prefer this approach, but it skips a lot of Rails tech, like view templating.
  • I suggest installing Rails with rbenv (in fact, think about installing Node with nodenv, too). Some people think rvm is the way to go, but it blew up on me more than once, so I put it out to pasture.
  • ActiveModel is so, so awesome.

You’ll be able to build the backend projects here using Rails, if you want, but also check out The Odin Project. It’s like freeCodeCamp, but with a focus on Rails. Their community will be much more responsive to questions about Rails and Ruby.

Good luck!