The pilot semester of RoR teaching at OSU is over

The aim of the course was to introduce students to the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails web framework. Students were expected to have a basic knowledge of object-oriented programming principles and an understanding of concepts such as object, class, inheritance, etc.

The course "Programming in Ruby on Rails" in points

• Motivation, introduction to Ruby, versioning, syntax, basic data types
• Complex structures, classes, objects in Ruby
• Introduction to the Ruby on Rails framework, setting up, structure and starting a project, service objects
• MVC architecture, templates, routs, Gemfile + gems
• ActiveModel - association, validation
• ActiveModel 2 - callbacks, working with DB using ActiveRecord
• Form creation, simpleform, authorization and authentication, Devise, session + cookies
• Sending emails with Action Mailer, uploading Active Storage files

The class consisted of two lectures and two labs per week for 18 students. One lecture was given by the owner of our company Ing. Jiří Kubica on the topic of the Central Reservation System solution for the Ministry of Health - Reservatic project. Students earned points from the exercises, 2 homework assignments and a semester project to complete the course with credit for 4 credits.

Learning outcomes

By completing the course, the student will be able to write scripts and be familiar with the syntax of Ruby, be able to create and set up a web project in the Ruby on Rails framework from scratch, be able to connect the project to a database and query it using ActiveRecord. The student can also create a simple API and understand the concepts, principles and structure of projects written in Ruby on Rails. Last but not least, the student was introduced to the issues of testing applications written in this way.

Although the initial preparation took a lot of time, it was compensated by the warm feeling that they can pass on their many years of practical experience in this way. As the feedback from the students based on the questionnaire showed, the clash with the reality in practice is great. The students perceived the beginning as quite difficult, but as the semester progressed, the pace was matched and suddenly the subject started to make sense to them and everything started to fall into place.

Because of the interest in this course, we plan to continue teaching it in the next academic year 2023/2024, with a foundation course in Ruby on Rails in the winter term and then a follow-up course, "Advanced Programming in Ruby on Rails" in the summer term.