Questions from a novice

#1

Hello all,

I am fairly new to programming. I have been studying at Launch School for about a year now and just finished their back-end program where I learned the fundamentals of Ruby and SQL via PostgreSQL. I have also learned the basics of using the command line. That is literally all of my experience.

With that said, I am wondering exactly what else I would need to know to get started using RubyMotion. Right now I am only wanting to use it for fun / as a hobby. I have already tried to install it and ran into problems on the “Getting Started” section that I was not able to figure out on my own. This lead me to believe I probably have some gaps in my knowledge that will prevent me from working with RubyMotion if I can’t even get it started while following a walkthrough…

Could you please advise me on what else I should perhaps look into learning and maybe a good resource to learn this material?

Thank you very much in advance!

#2

The best way to get started with a new platform is to build a video game :grimacing:

  1. Tell me what errors you’re getting and I’ll help you work through them.
  2. Join the Slack channel and say hello: http://motioneers.herokuapp.com
  3. Clone this “game development getting started” repository and play around: https://github.com/amirrajan/RubyMotionSpriteKit
#3

Hey, I have a course that is launching next week (in conjunction with my talk about RubyMotion at We Are Developers Congress). It’s called “RubyMotion Jumpstart”, and if you sign up at https://wndx.school, you will get an email when it opens up!

#4

Thank you @amirrajan, I will get on the Slack channel.

Also thank you @wndxlori, I will definitely check out your course!

#5

I tried to find and sign up for the course but I was unable to do so. I created an account, but when I tried to find this course, no results were found.

#6

I’m just finishing 2 updates to the course material, before it goes public again. I can see your school signup, so you’ll get an email as soon as it goes live again!

#7

@jtruman do you have at least a Hello World App showing up in the simulator?

#8

Sounds good. Thanks!

#9

Hey, you’re currently helping me on Slack I’ll just continue our convo there. Thanks!

#10

For posterity’s sake. Long and short of it was:

  1. Make sure you’ve run motion android-setup (or motion android-setup --sdk_version=XX).
  2. Make sure that the SDK you’re targeting is under the ~./rubymotion-android/sdk directory.
  3. Make sure you have Java 1.8 installed (Getting Started docs will be updated to reflect this… currently it says that you only need 1.6).
  4. Make sure you have an emulator started and running before running rake emulator.
#11

Hi Lori, I’ll be signing up for the course. Looks perfect for me. Just watched the preview and noticed you said the RubyMotion Starter is limited to iOS and Android. That was my understanding, too, but checking back just now it looks as though macOS has very recently been added to the list. Nice to learn that one of the limitations of the free Starter has been removed!

#12

LOL, yes, just after I recorded that, Amir mentioned that macOS had been added. The perils of recorded material :woman_shrugging:

I was speaking at We Are Developers conference last week, and on vacation until I get back this coming Friday. The full course material will be made available at that time! Didn’t think it was a good idea to launch while I was away :wink: