When I first started with rails I went through Michael Hartl tutorial too. I found it great for teaching me the syntax and the workflow. In future projects, I just planned out what features I'd need and then searched http://railscasts.com/ for episodes which did what I wanted. There are over 400 and a great starting point! The only way to really learn programming is by trail and error. The more things you try the better you'll get. The best $9/month you'll spend! I would normally have the episodes open while working on my project, and just pause/play as I went through.

Railscasts is fantastic. That's what I am using to learn Devise and other devious gems.

@WestCoastJustin, I am not able to plan the app. How do I create a database for restaurant menus, where I need to differentiate eat-in and takeaway prices, substitutions, additions and subtractions in an item etc.

Okay, I see. I guess if I was to offer advice, I would say get a pad and sketch out how you think the app will work, and make a data model (on paper -- this is much easier). What I mean is, as you go through all these pages and the workflow, think about all the data you will need to collect (restaurant names, contact info, menu items, prices (in/out), dates, etc) and how it relates to each other. I would then start with the simplest thing possible and slowly add to the system. The first prototypes will likely throw away, but this will give you useful feedback as you iterate your design. This should really only take you a couple days to get a prototype with a very simple flow. Maybe just do the mockups without any coding. I think it is hard for people to help when you are not really stuck on something. I'd say, start your app, and see where it goes, you'll likely get stuck and then you can start to research the solution, either via railscasts or stackoverflow, or email someone ;) Hope that helps.

You're in luck! One Month Rails teaches you how to build your idea while you learn to code:

https://onemonthrails.com

If he's finished Michael Hartl's tutorial, I think he's already past One Month Rails (It references Michael Hartl as a "what's next" item).

That said, potentially seeing a different application (A Pinterest clone) might help understand the differences and therefore the foundations of an application.

For a different perspective, I am now following teamtreehouse rails app tutorials, to build a facebook style app. They make easy work of building a simple app as there are no tests written, and quite a bit of hand-holding. I guess One Month Rails does something similar, but at this stage I need a bit of one-on-one help.

Put your email in you profile under about or drop me a line.

Thanks, sending you an email and updated my profile to include email.

Why not book a few hours with Michael directly? http://anyfu.com/mhartl

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