Ruby on Rails

cocoonfx · Jun 17th, 2007, 05:36

Hi

May seem a stupid question, but what is Ruby on Rails about? is it like Java? Is it worth learning or is it just a Fad at the moment???

robbied72 · Sep 18th, 2007, 11:36

Ruby on Rails or RoR is well worth learning (I am at present via www.lynda.com) it is a true OOP based language which has a very DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) based structure.

It also has some very cool rapid development calls such as Scaffold, this basically creates CRUD pages for you as you call this command, it is also intelligent in a sense that if you add fields to a table that you have used the scaffold command it will add them in as if by magic....

Hope this helps

Robbie

mzslater · Dec 17th, 2007, 03:22

Ruby on Rails is an excellent framework for building web applications. For simple sites, its complexity may not be justified, but if you're building anything complex in php or.net, you could almost surely do it more quickly with Ruby on Rails -- once you learn it, which does take some time. Compared to building Java web applications, it is much easier to develop with.

I have a podcast that teaches Ruby on Rails fundamentals for web designers and developers: it's at LearningRails.com.

Michael Slater

robbied72 · Dec 17th, 2007, 09:59

Thanks for the link Michael, the podcast rocks and I will put the word around for you on the other forums I visit.

I have started to delve into the development side of things but as I am so busy creating Classic ASP sites in my day job I haven't had time to learn any more lately, but after listening to the podcast I'm going to make time as developing in Ruby is going to save me so much time.

Looking forward to the next podcast on the 24th.

kmr2 · Jan 4th, 2008, 17:35

Our firm has been doing most of our work in Ruby on Rails for the past year. Our developers are largely ex-Java folks who appreciate the reduced overhead of RoR.

I can also share that, as a non-programmer trying to pick it up, Ruby on Rails has been far more productive for me that PHP. For newbies, I think the most powerful feature is ActiveRecord, which makes it very, very easy to deal with database tables in your code.

A couple of caveats for newbies (at least based on my experience) - the learning curve can be somewhat steep depending on your existing skills. In order to get productive in RoR, you'll need to learn 3 things pretty well: one, the syntax and conventions of both Ruby (the programming language) and Rails (the web framework); two, you'll need to know object-oriented programming (since Ruby is a purely object oriented language); three, you'll need to know and understand MVC web development frameworks (model-view-controller.)

By comparison, you can get started a lot easier with PHP just knowing the syntax and throwing some code up.

One more suggestion - it's soooo much easier to get started if you can find another person to program with occasionally.

If you want to see an example of what a newbie like me can create on RoR in a couple of months (using part of my time,) check out www.paybackable.com. It's all in RoR with some javascript and a touch of AJAX (another thing Rails makes much easier.)

Hope this helps.

- Kevin