Ask HN: How do you memorize the tons of commands related to rails?

8 points by aaronsung 11 years ago | 13 comments

I am currently learning rails. I used to programming in .NET and Java ecosystem and I got good GUI tools/IDEs such as VS and Eclipse. However, when I had come into rails, I found there are tons of commands are needed to memorize before you can use rails efficiently, e.g. rvm commands related to gemsets, rails commands for generating controller and models, rake commands for managing databases, etc. I found it's a bit difficult for me. Do you guys have any tricks or tools for this hard job?

patio11 11 years ago |

Back in the day, I had Amy Hoy's Rails cheatsheet printed out next to my work desk, and I referred to it pretty constantly for the first few weeks. ~6 years later all of the common stuff is second-nature and the esoteric stuff is either a) somewhere in one of my codebases or b) on Google.

christiangenco 11 years ago | |

Is this the referenced Amy Hoy cheatsheet?

https://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/ruby-on-rails-cheat-...

rubiquity 11 years ago |

Realistically, you only need to memorize a few:

- rake test: run the entire test suite

- rails s: run the rails server

- rails c: opens up an IRB/pry session with your Rails app

- rails g migration: create a new migration

- rake db:migrate - Run new migrations

- rake db:create - create the DB the first time

- rake db:schema:load - generate the DB from schema.rb

- rake db:setup - generate a new database from migrations

- rake routes - Spit out the routes and path helpers

Don't ever use rails generate model/controller. It generates so much garbage that you likely won't need.

There are a bunch of other commands off of rake db:migrate but most aren't needing to be memorized. Our brains are only so large and dense and mine is particularly small, memorize what is important and memorize how to look up the rest.

lukeHeuer 11 years ago | |

'rake' also runs the entire test suite, as it's an alias for 'rake test'.

I really disagree on the bit about not using rails g for controllers, and especially models. If you include your fields and types in the generate command you are given the corresponding migration, fixture, and test file for said model. If most of what you need can be generated by a single command, that's a whole lot less to remember compared to the intricacies of manually creating migrations, fixtures, test files etc. The generate commands have gotten so solid throughout the years, you can even do polymorphic and other associations through them and skip manually writing out all those details at this point. A whole lot less to remember there.

rubiquity 11 years ago | | |

I think I made the decision a couple years ago that I'd rather just remember what the files should look like and create them as I need them. I work on varying types of Rails apps (some full-on HTML/JS and others just JSON APIs) where a lot of times you don't need most of those files. I could see merit in just remembering the generator commands, though.

creature 11 years ago | |

With the rake tasks, you're better off learning "rake -T" (list all rake tasks that have a description). You can find the one you need in there, and the most common ones will soon sink in via osmosis as you use them regularly.

mod 11 years ago | |

I use "rails g [x]" a lot, for models and controllers, and less frequently scaffold.

I don't see the penalty for some empty javascript files etc. And I like having everything where it belongs.

AznHisoka 11 years ago | |

The only ones I know from memory is:

script/rails console and rake db:migrate

everything else I look up online, and I've been coding for 5 years in rails

mechanical_fish 11 years ago |

Let me get the plug in first: if you are on a Mac, try Dash, the app that looks up docs for you. I have it mapped to a keystroke in emacs, and I can sometimes park the cursor atop, say, the word 'render' and look it up in one motion.

(Sometimes it takes more motions, because Dash knows the docs for everything and sometimes doesn't get the context right, but that might also be driver error: the app is always politely telling me that I could learn to use it even better.)

Docs aren't always the best tool but it is good to have them at your fingertips.

patio11 is on to something when he suggests using your own codebases. Keep them all on your machine. Learn how to search them. (I use emacs and its various project-directory search utilities like Projectile and Helm, but there are other tools.)

If you don't have any Rails codebases to refer to yet, Michael Hartl is here to help you.

Your personal library is best because it comes from your perspective and with your memory cues. It also only covers use cases you have actually seen, which sounds like a bug but which is actually a feature. The problem with trying to use public docs as references is that they cover all the features that you will never use.

One drawback of your personal library is that it will always feel obsolete. This is a good thing; it means you are improving. Fix it up in bits and pieces where you can. Borrow ideas from the pages you Google.

There is a school of thought which says that you should use your public Github profile as your personal library. Having dabbled in this for a while, I now reject it. Do not write your notes for an audience larger than one. The amount of time you spend thinking "is it dangerous or embarrassing to record this line of code in my private personal repo?" should be zero. If there is anything worse than having the internet read over your shoulder, it is imagining the internet reading over your shoulder. Buy a big private Github account, use Bitbucket, or run a private server for your hacks and notes.

Take notes on everything you do. In particular, get in the habit of pasting the command-line things that you do into a cheat sheet. This is the beginning of devops wisdom. One reason why the advanced deployer does everything with a script (or Vagrantfile, or Dockerfile) is that the script remembers the steps for you and can be looked up later.

barry-cotter 11 years ago |

Download anki or mnemnosyne or supermemo or any other Spaced Repetition System program. Add the 50 or so most common commands to it and what they do. If you set it to test you on 10 new commands a day you will know all of them cold within two weeks at five minutes a day.

heyalexej 11 years ago |

I use Anki[0] to learn and memorize tons of command line tools and Vim motions. It takes a couple minutes every day. Doing this in combination with actually using the tools brings fluency rather quickly.

[0] http://ankisrs.net