I still affirm that Michael Hartl's "Ruby On Rails Tutorial" (http://www.railstutorial.org/book) is one of the most beautifully simplistic and effective tutorial books ever written. Combine his book with Ryan Bates's Railscasts (http://railscasts.com/) and you can pretty much build anything you can think of. I learned RoR we these resources as well and am just starting to take the plunge into iOS. I haven't looked into NSScreencasts much, but I did obtain a copy of The Big Nerd Ranch Guide to iOS Programming (http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Edition-Guides/d...).

Anyway, congrats on launching both an iOS and web application. Bonjournal looks awesome!

Thanks!

Good luck with iOS. NSScreencast is not as useful as Railscast, but there are some pretty useful tips. For example, I thought this episode was really helpful starting off:

http://nsscreencast.com/episodes/63-from-scratch

I've also been hearing great things about Treehouse, which I plan to use when I tackle Android:

http://teamtreehouse.com/

Thanks all for the kind words of support! Another essential resource was Basecamp's (formerly 37Signals) book, Getting Real. It is a must-read for anyone building software, especially for first-timers like us.

https://basecamp.com/books/Getting%20Real.pdf

Congrats.. so how much fail to actually deliver. The app looks beautiful.

Question - in terms of the iOS web, what's the Ruby vs Objective-C breakdown?

Are you using the same Rails back-end from the web app with the iOS app. Would love to speak with you, shoot me an email - username @ gmail.com

We're pretty happy with the end product. All of the features that we wanted are there.

Breakdown is probably 75% Ruby 25% Objective-C. Yes, same back end as the web app, which I think is key. The iOS app is essentially a glorified browser. So everything is pretty DRY and easy to maintain.

Congrats! :) I'm not sure how you're implementing responsiveness (it works fantastically btw) but if it's feasible it could be nice to de-emphasise the iOS app a bit on other mobile devices. I can see the site is basically the same as desktop but with the big iOS banner it felt a lot like a limited content mobile site.

That said the iOS app looks really nice - design reminds me a bit of airbnb which is definitely a good thing. Can I pay for an Android app some time? Congrats again!

Thanks, mcintyre1994! We're using Susy and Compass for responsive CSS. We have plans for an Android version, as soon as jpn learns Java. :)

Great feedback on our home page -- you're right about the iOS emphasis, and limited content feel. We're currently refreshing our home page, and will be sure to work these issues out. Thanks!!

You say that you took a year to learn RoR and Objective-C for this, but can I ask: were you starting from scratch as a programmer and was this a full-time project (or were you balancing your learning and development alongside having another job)?

Congrats on the launch! Both the app and the website look beautiful.

Thanks!

I basically started from just Excel/VBA and a little bit of .NET.

Initially, I was doing this along with another project, but during the second half, it was full-time.

Clickable:

Bonjournal, a travel journal app - iOS app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bonjournal/id719266933)

- web app (https://bonjourn.al)

Cool. Thanks!

Wow, this is great, good job!

I am currently teaching myself while working full time in a non tech related career. May I ask how old you are? This is very encouraging. I'm currently Hartl's tutorial and CodeSchool, so hopefully I'm on the right track.

I'm 35.

good to know, a bit of the insecurity I've had comes from seeing people who have been doing some of things since what seems like forever. Good to know there is still hope!

Beautiful and simple way to log trips! It never occurred to me to do it, but your app made me want to! Honestly think you can charge a buck more, and I rarely buy apps. Well, unless you have competition.

Thanks, nicholas73!

We're going to bump up the price to 2.99 after this promotional period. We want to give our currents users/followers a way to get the app at a discount.

Nice work. Great to see you go from not much to a nice polished app. And props for including your resources.

Thanks, joshdance.

There are so many quality resources out there for a newbie developer!

Balling! I'm actually going to Canada today so I will give it a test drive.

Great! Happy travels!

Quite an achievement. Best of luck to you and your wife.

Thxs!

That is an amazing site, congratulations.

Thank you!

Beautiful!

Thank you!