Scratching with PeepCode

My quest for knowledge about this mysterious and elusive Ruby and her Rails friends, has led me to bookshops, online movie libraries, Railscasts and has resulted in a fair bit of Googling.

PeepCode

PeepCode is a set of movies, which do help shed light on Ruby on Rails, TextMate and other groovy stuff. Well recorded, and packed with juicy goodness, which makes them strangely addictive. PeepCode is another great tool for learning. The Ruby on Rails from Scratch series are particularly brilliant. Best of all they have some free examples, which will give you a good idea, if PeepCode is for you.

TextMate shortcuts for noobies

I have been using TextMate as my text/html/rails editing for a week or two now. It has largely replaced BBEdit, and for the most part I am extremely happy that I switched. I have been struggling with a few aspects of TextMate though. For example, if I used the bundle to insert a <br /> tag. (Keyboard Shortcut: ctrl + return), I got a <br> tag, not ideal when working on an xhtml file.

Setting up TextMate

This is easily fixed though thanks to Soryu's excellent TextMate Setup Tutorial

" The most important one for anyone who uses HTML will be TM_XHTML. Setting it to / will make all the HTML Bundle Snippets insert correct XHTML by closing single tags like <hr /> and <img /> "

TextMate Basics

Soryu has also written a TextMate Basics Tutorial, which is just the ticket for TextMate noobs like my self.

Cheating with TextMate

G Design's TextMate Cheat Sheet is a welcome addition to any TextMate users interior decor, or if like me your wife feels that pasting key commands on your walls spoils the interior design. Then why not put this Cheatsheet on your desktop instead.