Because when i was learning to program, I wanted to play with code that had a familiar model and get some instant gratification.
The problem with learning to code is the learning-curve. Shit is real and painful and i found that the best cure for the pain was cloning an app with features and tweaking until it broke and learning along the way.
I think this is why wordpress is SO popular. Its stupid-easy to fire-up, and changes come with one-click package installs and tiny code changes.
My main goal for this is to give new programmers some code to look at and talk about. Anytime i get questions, I plan to add them here...
If you're new to rails, follow this and come back http://installfest.railsbridge.org/installfest/
Open your terminal
$ git clone git@github.com:blairanderson/open-source-job-board.git jobbr
$ cd jobbr
Lets look at some code
When someone visits your website, they're literally just requesting some HTML, CSS, and Javascript! requests come to your application through the ROUTER.
SO you type something into google and hit enter, then click to the first result....
your web browser visits a website and the website starts to send HTML and CSS and Javascript.