It has begun. Armed with last week's worth of reading (this, that, and so on) about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and watching screencasts, I've crossed that magical boundary and typed these fateful commands a little while ago:
gem install rails --include-dependencies rails chapter-1 cd chapter-1 script/server script/generate controller Greeting vi app/controller/greeting_controller.rb script/generate controller Greeting index vi app/views/greeting/index.rhtml
Where this heads is anyone's guess, but I'm truly amazed at how much of the lifting I don't even have to think about.
Posted by jzawodn at October 23, 2006 09:58 PM
i just started with rails about a month ago. It definitely takes some getting used to (my first time with ruby as well), but it's amazing how easy it is to make something that is completely functional, and even somewhat attractive, with a minimal amount of work.
My favorite so-far is "ajax-scaffold"
Since you're a database guy, you should enjoy the RESTful stuff in Rails.
Welcome to the Rails community! You can search for ruby gems and plugins at RubyForge and find some cool stuff for your application tuning.
Don't get too excited. Try Symfony and stick with a language designed from the ground up for web development.
Hi Jeremy,
I've been reading your blog for a long time, and I'm pleased to see you enjoying the framework I spend so much time working on. Best of luck with your adventures and if you have any questions / problems, just blog about them, I'll drop in to help out :).
Cheers
Koz
> Don't get too excited. Try Symfony and stick with a language designed from the ground up for web development.
>
> http://www.symfony-project.com/
Ugh, PHP. 'Nuff said.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Ruby. Once you start, you will seriously wonder why you put up with PHP for so long...
Welcome to Rails! It's good to see you're making the plunge and I'm sure you'll find a lot of goodness which will make you wonder why it took you so long to try it. ;-)
RailsConf 2007...will we see Yahoo! there in force?
Nice! I was looking for an item reservation script recently, didn't turn up anything useful, thought that rails would be a cinch to layout the application. I look forward to your comments on rails usefulness for what you are working on.
Aw. I guess this means you've picked Ruby over Python to learn next.
Oh, well.
No, I actually spent some time with Python first. But it wasn't really that fun, unfortunately.
Ja. I'm loving ruby on rails too.
Pragmatic's Rails Recipes has some awesome stuff. (self referential many to many relations (i.e. social networks)
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_rr/
Scaffolding is awesome as are active records. HurraH!
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on rails migrations, you being mysql guy.
Also, if you forgot to check out django while you were evaluating python, it's worth a look.
there are similarly-minded toolkits now for most of the major development environments. catalyst for perl comes to mind.
Just be warned, once you start it makes it hard to go back to anything else. Any work I do in Java, PHP, or Perl these days makes me think how much easier it would be if I were doing it in Ruby or in Rails.
Why only your _free_ time? I find plenty of occasions to use rails at work, both for internal web-apps, and for creating quick mock-ups of dynamic web-sites. I'm even experimenting with creating a helper plugin for YUI; next hack-day maybe?
Don't drink the Kool-aid! Don't do it, man!
But seriously, if you ever have any questions about Ruby or RoR, don't be afraid to give me or just about anyone in the community a holler.
We're almost annoyingly fanatical about helping Ruby newbs get a better understanding of the language. (something I'm still learning, but I have been using Ruby/Rails full-time for 5 months now)
Interesting that you found Python not much fun, I had a few months with it earlier this year and despite its obvious worthiness couldn't help myself thinking that I'd much rather be working in Ruby (it wasn't an option: the package I was customising used Python as its scripting language).
Something that bugged me (still does, come to think) was the insistence on a colon prior to indentation. I couldn't see why it was necessary, other than to make parsing and syntax error identification easier.
I think that some of the Python/Ruby split comes from the individual's direction (for want of a better word). Ruby is so completely object-focused that I think it's likely to appeal to those of a more heavily OO bent. I picked it up as a perceived halfway house on the way to learning Smalltalk. Haven't got there yet, I've been having too much fun where I am.
I was reading the Prag Prog Rails development book on holiday last week - I found all kinds of goodies I didn't know about Rails, stuff that got me planning to dive back in. (And BTW, the PragProg publishing model, where they beta their books as PDFs for early subscribers, is a fine example of agile publishing).
I'm working with Ruby/Rails since an year, I wrote some articles and created a Ruby community in Italy that's called The Ruby Mine.
I developed in PHP and Perl for years but when I've read about the simplicity and the elegance of Ruby I felt in love with him, I've seen the light.
Ruby is a great language and developing with Rails, that brings the power of the language to your hands, is so much fun.
It's a pity that "some company" is stuck on PHP development... :)
I hope to see more Ruby stuff in Yahoo soon... :)
