Highly recommend Discourse, even if you don't know Rails.

Sold!

Caveat: I don't know Rails. I've only recently started teaching myself to code/program/develop. So I guess now is a good time to start with Rails as any, eh?

8 months ago I jumped straight into working with Django/Python - one fine day, I made a list of project ideas that I've had in my head for a while and started chalking out the corresponding algos & coding them without a care about how 'bad' my code was going to look. (Yeah, I belong to the 'learn first, refine later' school of thought.)

8 months since I first started, the score is two ideas done, six more to go. Wait, scratch that, seven more to go. Wish me luck!

I can only agree. I started learning to code, because I wanted to acomplish one special thing (downloading and parsing xml from a weather-source to look at historical wether data for five places).

I started with python, learned a little bit sqlite on the way, learned about parsing files (good for understanding our devs at work better) and so on. Now I've gone on, got a little sandbox-server at work (I'm an editor) and atomated some really bad jobs at work with python. And did some funny things to make life better for our editorial team.

Yes, I am probably still writing spaghetti code, and there are a lot of things left I really like to learn, but with time comes understanding and I get better week by week.

When I look at code from 3 month ago, I get the urge to refactor it. But it works, it runs as it should and today I am more inclined to learn new things and get new things done first.

So yes. Keep coding and have fun!

Actually, if your goal is to set up a discussion forum, then you can get away with "ignoring" the code behind Discourse (except for some YAML config files)

Also, email me (details in profile) if you need some more help with this idea - it's a good one!

Code without giving a shit. The best way to start!