Full stack with Ruby: Improvement on the structure of the curriculum

[iambenji-44]

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Describe your suggestion

Hello,

I’d like to share a concern regarding the structure of the Full Stack Ruby curriculum. Compared to the JavaScript path, the Ruby curriculum feels less intuitively organized.

The JavaScript path follows a clear progression—from frontend concepts to database and backend development—which helps learners build understanding step by step. In contrast, the Ruby curriculum introduces Ruby relatively early, in the middle of the learning path. This shift in concept can be confusing for beginners or those entirely new to different programming paradigms.

I suggest reviewing the structure to create a smoother transition, similar to how the JavaScript curriculum progresses.

Thank you for your time and consideration. 😊

Path

Ruby / Rails

Lesson Url

https://www.theodinproject.com/paths/full-stack-ruby-on-rails

(Optional) Discord Name

de_krypt

(Optional) Additional Comments

No response

[JoshDevHub]

Moving this to a discussion. I don't get the feeling that this would be a very popular proposal, but I'll leave it alive in case others want to chime in with agreement.

Three reasons I don't think it's a particularly good idea:

1. It'd be a ton of work to reorg the content across the curriculum and website repos. We'd want to be getting a big benefit from a change such as this in order to take on that amount of work, and you most certainly wouldn't be able to just do this by yourself.
2. Many learners choose the Ruby/Rails course because they're more interested in backend and want to get into that content straight away rather than do frontend beforehand.
3. The way it's organized now has nice harmony with the Ruby/Rails-way. JavaScript and particularly its ecosystem are often considered by Rubyists to be a liability that is best avoided. Knowing some of it is of course a requirement, but Ruby/Rails programmers tend to reject the notion that modern fullstack webapps must use React or other beefy JS libraries/frameworks in order to deliver a quality product. Ruby/Rails apps are first and foremost: Ruby/Rails apps. JS is often sprinkled in as necessary to get a reactive frontend, and most of the application logic will not be written in it.

[iambenji-44]

Noted 👍

[mao-sz]

Agreed that the Ruby pathway is structured well for its context. An argument could be made that it could still be structured well if it mirrored the JS pathway in moving back end stuff to the end, but IMHO at best, it's a sideways change (i.e. just a different approach, not a better approach) meaning the amount of work would be insane for a very invasive change without significant benefit. And given the above by Josh, I personally think it's not a sideways change either. The current way makes sense given the Ruby/Rails ecosystem. Likewise, the JS pathway structure better suits the JS ecosystem as well. While each pathway is just a different journey to reach the same destination (a strong foundation in web dev), it makes sense that each pathway has its own context that warrants a different angle of teaching.