This is a talk we did for our 4-week course on learning to build web apps. Teach yourself to hack and build an MVP that works.

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Teach Yourself to Build
Web Apps
And learn to hack!

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Alex Yang
Instructor @BaseRails
• Harvard, AB in Applied Math
• Boston Consulting Group
• Left to start a food delivery
company
• Freelancer for Codecademy
Susie Ye
Producer @BaseRails
• Rutgers University, PharmD.
• Founded used-books
ecommerce company
• Launched Spriggle, social
selling for STEM-inspired toys
Who We Are

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We’re two people who taught ourselves to
code in 6 months…
Our Story

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It was painful.
We wasted a huge amount of time.
We googled a lot of bizarre errors, some of
which took weeks to figure out.

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Here’s what we would have told
ourselves 1 year ago…
Disclaimer: This is just our approach from our own experiences. Hate it? Love it? Either way, let us
know 

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Let’s say you have an idea for the next
billion dollar startup…

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You want to get something on the web
as quickly as possible

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There are so many website builders and templates
out there to build blogs, landing pages, and
ecommerce stores

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But they all come with limitations

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Limitation #1: Difficult to customize

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Limitation #2: Doesn’t include more
in-depth features
What if I want
to do more
than collect
emails?

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Limitation #3: Doesn’t serve your
purpose
But what if I want to build a marketplace?

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Limitation #4: Is often buggy and slow

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Your next step is probably to find
someone to build it for you….

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But unless you want to pay $XX,XXX and be
handcuffed to overseas developers every
time you want to customize something, it’s
not really a practical solution for most
entrepreneurs.

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YOU JUST REALLY WANT YOUR MVP TO
BE BUILT ALREADY!
I mean, how hard can it be?

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YOU JUST REALLY WANT YOUR MVP TO
BE BUILT ALREADY!
I mean, how hard can it be?
So you decide to do it yourself.

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Time to learn to code!

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Your Learning Road Map…

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2. JavaScript
1. HTML/CSS
3. Python/Ruby/PHP
5. Build your
MVP
4. Django/Rails

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2. JavaScript
1. HTML/CSS
3. Python/Ruby/PHP
5. Build your
MVP
4. Django/Rails
Not Really…

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Learning specific languages
from the ground up is NOT
the best way to learn to
prototype your web app

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Unless you’re trying to become a web developer as
a profession, learning computer theory and syntax
is not the most efficient use of your time.

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Most people end up with nothing to show
for their efforts

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That’s because
learning to build web apps
is different from
learning to code

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So why are we still learning it the
same way?

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5 Lessons We Learned on
Teaching Yourself to Prototype
Web Apps

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Lesson #1:
Start with an idea, aka,
work on projects

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You don’t have to feel ready to get started

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Sketch out what you have in mind before you
start learning to code. That way, you can
visualize the functionalities you need to build.

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Our first project was a property
management marketplace called
RoomTaker

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We knew nothing about HTML, CSS,
Javascript, or Ruby on Rails.

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We just knew we wanted a popup form to
collect names and emails when people clicked a
button.

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If you don’t start with an idea in mind, it’s easy
to follow tutorials and end up with something
irrelevant

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We stayed true to our initial vision.
It took us 4 weeks to get it to work but we had
our first MVP.

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Lesson #2:
Don’t memorize syntax, learn to
recognize patterns

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This Ruby code may seem
incomprehensible to you

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But if someone told you it was a form creator,
and you can change some text to customize the
fields, suddenly it’s not that scary.

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The same as with math, it’s all about
filling in the blanks.

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Lesson #3:
Type out everything,
don’t copy and paste

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We know we just said to recognize
patterns and fill in the blank.

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We know we just said to recognize
patterns and fill in the blank.
But that doesn’t mean you should
just copy and paste your code from
others!

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Typing out all the code lets you get the hang of a
programming language’s syntax.

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You’re not forcing yourself to memorize
anything, but over time, you’ll be surprised at
how much code you can write just from muscle
memory.

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Lesson #4:
Learn in layers

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Let’s be honest…
the first time you see or write code,
you probably won’t understand it all.

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Let’s be honest…
the first time you see or write code,
you probably won’t understand it all.
And that’s okay!

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You don’t need to understand 100% of what
you’re doing the first time around

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You don’t need to understand 100% of what
you’re doing the first time around
(you’ll probably only understand 20%)

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Trying to master everything at once will slow
you down, make you frustrated, and cause you
to quit

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Repetition is key. Each time you work on a
project, you’ll start to retain more and more
information.

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Lesson #5:
Hold yourself accountable

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No one likes going through boring exercises. It’s
easy to just quit in the middle.

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Being accountable to
yourself is easier if you
have a specific goal in
mind…

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…Like finish building your wedding site

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Or showcase your MVP at a pitch event

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It’s also easier if you have someone who’s
interested in your progress, like a mentor or
friend

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Since we were working together on the same
project, we’d make sure the other person was
making progress at the end of each day.

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2 Months Later…

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2 Months Later…
We built out our second project: an
online food delivery web app called
FlipOrder

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It was a much more robust web app…

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With features including menu listings…

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…a shopping cart…

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…and automated transactional emails when
orders are placed….

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It took us 6 months from when we first started
learning to code to build FlipOrder from scratch.

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It took us 6 months from when we first started
learning to code to build FlipOrder from scratch.
….and then we asked ourselves why there
wasn’t a place that taught this stuff

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I mean, 60% of what we learned was applicable
to building any Rails app

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So to save others the time and energy
it took us, we created BaseRails, a
video learning platform for building
web apps.

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So to save others the time and energy
it took us, we created BaseRails, a
video learning platform for building
web apps.
(Here’s where we tell you about the awesome
solution we created)

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Instead of memorizing syntax or reading
programming books, we teach you to prototype
your ideas by working on real projects like
building an online marketplace.

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You start by building the base web app
11 Sections, 43 lectures, 7+ hours of content
• Installation
• Create Our Website
• Add front-end design
• Create listings with images
• Save and deploy on GitHub
and Heroku
• Host images online
• Allow users to place
orders
• Enable payments
• Transfer money to sellers

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Follow along the video screencasts with our
word-for-word transcripts…

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If you just want to get the code, view our
“Notes” section…

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If you get stuck on any video, just post your
question in the troubleshooting forum and we’ll
respond within 24 hours.

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We also provide a video library of popular
features so you can customize your app for your
own idea.

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We think learning this way is infinitely more
effective for building web apps

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In fact, check out one of our student’s projects
he built with BaseRails…

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Sign up at https://baserails.com to get started

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Hope this helped and thanks for viewing!
Shoot us your questions, comments, or concerns at:
susie@baserails.com
alex@baserails.com