I’ve been hitting my head against Rails, on and off, for the last couple years. I’ve read two books on the framework (not to mention a book or two on Ruby), and started a few Rails apps… which never got beyond some copied-and-pasted code that only half-worked.

Tonight, a frickin’ eternity after I started this process, I looked at my current code and wondered: why is that a string instead of a symbol?

My next thought was holy crap, this kinda makes sense. Afterward I was able to figure out the logic behind the code I copied and pasted, and was even able to fix some of the things that had been failing. After that, I took a victory lap.

Hitting your head against something and getting nowhere—even if you weren’t putting all that much effort into it—starts to be depressing after enough time passes. I had begun wondering if Rails would ever make any sense to me, and am glad (and relieved!) that I’ve finally made the slightest bit of progress.