Ruby/Sinatra Projects on GitHub for Beginner to Learn Good Practices
I've dabbled in web development for years by mainly just reading books, completing mini-tutorials, browsing blog posts, and generally just experimenting with many non-published pieces of code. Now I want to get more serious about picking a solution stack to focus on (both tools & technologies), and lean more towards front-end UX/UI development on database-driven apps.

My goal is to find projects on GitHub (and learn to use Git like a pro) that involve any/all of the following technologies:

 - **Ruby** as the server-side language, preferably using the **Sinatra framework**. I like Sinatra's attempt to be very minimal because it'll allow me to focus on getting Rails up & going ASAP, and since I'll have to install various gems to get extended functionality, I'll learn all about gem management.
 - **JavaScript & jQuery** (and possibly **CoffeeScript**) - Everyone knows that JS is the language of the front end, and fast becoming a contender for back-end development too. I'm mainly interested in DOM additions/subtractions (i.e. live adding/removing elements to a list), basic animations & UI "coolness", and AJAX.
 - **MongoDB** - I've read a lot about it and the whole idea of its NoSQL methodology sounds fascinating.
 - **LESS** & go more in depth in CSS - Nuff said. I mainly use Twitter Bootstrap as my base, so I'll probably focus on just extending that.
 - **Templating Language** like **ERB** or **HAML** - People say they help you write HTML code faster & cleaner, which is what I'm all about
 - **External API calls** that return JSON documents - Being able to connect to external APIs (and eventually learning to write them) is something I want to become second nature.
 - **User login/authentication** - Most all apps have user accounts/admin areas/etc. It seems like a necessary skill to learn.

There are quite a few things I'm interested in, it's just hard to know where to start since new technologies come out all the time.

I'd like to start with a "wishlist" type app that's very clean & allows a public (shareable, non-editable) and private (editable, sortable, etc) views. That should allow me to get the basics of all these technologies and move on from there. Thanks a ton for all your input!
Ruby/Sinatra Projects on GitHub for Beginner to Learn Good Practices
===

I've dabbled in web development for years by mainly just reading books, completing mini-tutorials, browsing blog posts, and generally just experimenting with many non-published pieces of code. Now I want to get more serious about picking a solution stack to focus on (both tools & technologies), and lean more towards front-end UX/UI development on database-driven apps.

My goal is to find projects on GitHub (and learn to use Git like a pro) that involve any/all of the following technologies:

 - **Ruby** as the server-side language, preferably using the **Sinatra framework**. I like Sinatra's attempt to be very minimal because it'll allow me to focus on getting Rails up & going ASAP, and since I'll have to install various gems to get extended functionality, I'll learn all about gem management.
 - **JavaScript & jQuery** (and possibly **CoffeeScript**) - Everyone knows that JS is the language of the front end, and fast becoming a contender for back-end development too. I'm mainly interested in DOM additions/subtractions (i.e. live adding/removing elements to a list), basic animations & UI "coolness", and AJAX.
 - **MongoDB** - I've read a lot about it and the whole idea of its NoSQL methodology sounds fascinating.
 - **LESS** & go more in depth in CSS - Nuff said. I mainly use Twitter Bootstrap as my base, so I'll probably focus on just extending that.
 - **Templating Language** like **ERB** or **HAML** - People say they help you write HTML code faster & cleaner, which is what I'm all about
 - **External API calls** that return JSON documents - Being able to connect to external APIs (and eventually learning to write them) is something I want to become second nature.
 - **User login/authentication** - Most all apps have user accounts/admin areas/etc. It seems like a necessary skill to learn.

There are quite a few things I'm interested in, it's just hard to know where to start since new technologies come out all the time.

I'd like to start with a "wishlist" type app that's very clean & allows a public (shareable, non-editable) and private (editable, sortable, etc) views. That should allow me to get the basics of all these technologies and move on from there. Thanks a ton for all your input!