Last Sunday I attended my first programming meetup. Having put it off for many months I felt anxious and a bit like an imposter before going.  By the time I had left I had learnt a number of new things, met some like minded people and probably helped my career. Here are the main things I would advise a beginner who is considering going to one, but keeps putting it on the long finger:

1. Everyone feels a bit nervous about meeting new people.

The only way to overcome this is practice.  The day of the meetup I tried to take my mind off it by organising other errands before it so as I wouldn't sabotage myself.

2. There will probably be other beginners there.

I certainly felt out of my dept at many points but there was no expectation that I should do anything except for listen and learn. The option was there to ask questions, or contribute but most people who were there for the first time did not.

3. The worst that can happen is you decided its not for you, make your excuses and leave.

This is highly unlikely but a good thing to tell yourself if you start to consider cancelling on the event.

4. You'll probably be glad you went.

Even if you learn nothing, which is unlikely, you will be glad that you have pushed yourself.  It's more likely that you will make new contacts, learn something about programming and remove all the false assumptions you may have made before going. For those reasons alone, it really is worth trying.


​

Suitable For: Absolute beginners - Beginner/Intermediate

Time it took me: 2-3 hours in stops and starts.

What you will Learn:

Basic Rails Scaffolding, Google Map embedding, Videos and Deployment.

Pros: Nice simple chunks that you can devote 10 mins a day to, if that is all the time that you have. Overall worth doing.

There is no github repository to check your results. This frustrated me initially but forced me to write out long stretches of code in a similar to Learn Ruby the Hard Way. It takes longer, and leads to lots of mistake but probably a better way to learn.

Cons: I found the authors accent a little hard to understand at times but it didn't really take from the overall experience.

There are some shortcuts that he uses for HTML and Javascript that weren't explained. Div classes and other elements seem to suddenly appear. I just paused the video and copied them out though which worked fine.

Google maps API has change since the course has been posted so his code doesn't exactly translate. This will make it frustrating for absolute beginners.

Link: ​https://www.udemy.com/building-rails-app-with-wistia-and-heroku-for-newbies/learn