I've been a believer in the power of prototyping to deliver software that clients actually want for almost as long as I've been programming. I learned the hard way that any other technique I (or others I observed) tried just didn't work. Despite the best of intentions and tremendous dedication to the project.

I've tried many different prototyping tools, including Justinmind Prototyper, Balsamiq, Azure, Protoshare, Pidoco--well the list could go on and on. It's not that these aren't all good products; they are. Some of them are very good. But somehow, they didn't quite deliver what I wanted in the way I wanted. My latest attempts are proving more successful.

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Several people are asking about my Ruby on Rails, An Immersive Introduction class (see last post). Here's the rundown on what you'll learn:

The class begins at 9.00 and finishes at 6.30 for 5 days.

We provide a catered lunch.

And Aspirin.

What You'll Learn

• Just Enough Ruby: you'll get comfortable with the major constructs of this wonderful language
• Rails MVC Architectural Implementationyou'll learn about the many defined folders and files that make up a Rails app
• Routing, Forwards and Back: initially confusing, Rails routing is tremendously helpful--if you understand how to make use of it (with special emphasis on RESTful end points)
• Configuring Databases: Oracle? SQL Server? MySQL? Postgres? SQLLite? Rails can handle them all -- even different databases for development v. testing v. production
• Migrations: source control for databases? Why didn't someone think of this sooner?
• Models: the heart of your application
• Forms from Models: more labor-saving goodness from Rails
• Model form validations: a bevy of built-in validators -- or create your own, custom validators
• Rails Console: you'll spend lots of time here probing your application
• Layouts: simple, elegant solution for section- or application-wide HTML
• Unit Testing: unit testing is really this simple?
• Sessions and Authentication
• Model Associations: hooking your models up, err...so to speak
• "Getting" Rails ActiveRecord: first, you'll hate it; then you'll love it
• Debugging Rails Applications: Stop the application while it's running, interrogate it to see what's going on under the hood -- one of my favorite aspects of Rails
• The Asset Pipeline: a good and simple idea that I have yet to see explained well
• ActiveRecord Query Interface: why you won't miss SQL (and how to use SQL for those times AR doesn't make sense)
• Events in Rails: learn this and it will revolutionize the way you write applications. Seriously.
• Ajax and Rails: very flexible; very easy

Again, the price is $3500. If you want to attend, send me an email at hal@halhelms.com or call me at 941.716.6909

Location: Austin, TX Dates: Jan 26-30, 2012

Several weeks ago, a crazy idea popped into my head: why don't I teach programming to my family? Here are the list of characters:

G: my wife, a very gifted artistic person. She uses Facebook, but struggles with anything more complicated. She's convinced the computer is out to get her.

E: my stepson, a graduate of Fashion Institute of Technology. He's used computers for Adobe Photoshop, but not much more.

W: my stepson, a year of college. He has a Facebook page and understands a little about how to use a web browser, but nothing more.

I presented the idea to them like this...

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