Week 1
Barebones Social Networking App
Build a barebones social networking app from scratch
 user profiles
 registration/authentication
 friendships
 groups
Assignment:
 install rails
 run:
   ./script/generate model User name:string password:string ..
   ./script/generate scaffold User
   read through autogenerated scaffold
   think of a class project

Week 2
Walkthrough of scaffolding code
Using the same commands as the hw assignment, generate a basic CRUD app
  Opinionated Software
    Convention over configuration
    DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)
  Explanation of generated model code
    migration
    test/fixtures
    model
      basic ORM
      naming convention
  Explanation of generated scaffold code  
    controller
    view/helpers
    functional tests
Assignemnt:
  ./script/generate scaffold_resource User name:string ...
  read through code
  watch David Hansson's REST talk online
  work on project

Week 3
Walkthrough of RESTful scaffolding
Using the same commands as the hw assignment, generate a basic basic CRUD app
  Talk about:
    What is REST?
    Why should we use it?
  Explanation of RESTful routes in rails
Install restful_authentication
  Brief introduction to plugins, authentication 
How to model relationships between classes in rails
  Basics one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many 
  Talk about rich domains (name the relationship between entities)
  Build the friendships feature (many-to-many relationship)
Assignment:
  Read through restful_auth code
  work on project

Week 4
Sessions
HTTP is stateless, so how do you do sessions
  cookies, sessions, and how rails handles them
  walk through of restul_authentication
Introduction to AJAX
  add some ajax effects using rjs
  discuss how ajax works and its integration with rails
Assignemnt:
  get an irc account on freenode
    ask a question
    answer a question
  get action mailer set up for sending mail (due in two weeks)
  work on project

Week 5
Views and ActiveSupport
Rendering views:
  partials (collections)
  layout
  content_for
  helpers
Walk through of some rails extensions to ruby (ActiveSupport)
  show case some of the extensions
  read through some of the code
Assignment:
  _why's article on metaprogramming
  read through Jamis Buck's three article serires on ActiveRecord.find
  work on project

Week 6
Metaprogramming
Metaprogramming in ruby
  object/class model
  open classes
  runtime dynamic code generation
    *_eval
  Review of _why's article on metaprogramming
  Review of Buck's articles on ActiveRecord.find
Assignment:
  extract some code from your class project into a gem or rails plugin

Week 7
ActionMailer
Build a facebook-like-wall feature
Build a notifications feature using ActionMailer
  views can't use helpers
  multiple attachments
  notify people when they have a message posted to their wall
Assignment:
  go through simple capistrano tutorial
  work on project

Week 8
Deployment
Show how to use capistrano to deploy a rails application
Walk through some of the code
Assignment:
  read some articles on performance and scaling
    DHH has some
    James Duncan Davidson has some
    poocs.net

Week 9
Performance and Scaling
Talk about how to improve performance
  tools for analysis
  common performance problems
  writing better queries
  caching
    rails
    memcached
Discuss some scaling issues and possible solutions
Assignment:
  work on project

Week 10
  Presentations
Assignment:
  course feedback