Rails on Rails taking it to the next level

Question

For the past few months i've had the feeling that i reached a boundry in my knowledge of Ruby on Rails (RoR) development. I've developed large and small applications for both big/small clients and friends / hobby projects. I know how to develop these applications and it's beginning to feel a little bit tedious. I want to take my programming skills to the next level, me having a little experience with Javascript i enduldged myself in some good Javascript books and learned alot! But now i'm back stuck at the same RoR level that i've been for the past few months. and i want to get that knowledge boost i got from the Javascript books.

I really want to contribute to alot of open source projects but when i look at the source code i get the feeling that i dont know enough of the code and that i will become a irritating burdon to the main developer(s) of the project(s). This is just some uncertainty of mine but i dont want to tire/irritate other developers...

I feel stuck and i dont know what to do to up my own level. I try to read the source codes but often i get stuck with mainly the question "why are you doing this, and what are the benefits of it? And how does it work?". I know i want to up my knowledge of both ruby and rails but i dont know how to do this. In my time programming RoR it's been very difficult for me to pinpoint my "skill level" knowing i can always up my skills. So knowing this i started with some basic Ruby books: The well grounded Rubyist and Beginning Ruby. These were great books i learned some nifty little tricks but that's about it.

Do you guys recommend any resources and or books. I don't have alot of experience with other languages than Ruby / Javascript. But i really want to learn, i don't have a solid programming background because it mainly evolved from hobby to work. I want to contribute to open source projects and work and mainly learn from other great developers. I'm stuck and i don't know where to start.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A few books:

• Eloquent Ruby

• Rails Anti Patterns

• Crafting Rails Applications

Then, armed with knowledge, you'll be able to read code (your first and good intuition): that's a great source of inspiration.