[NA] Ruby on Rails?

[CJones]

My 'capstone' MIS course is having us do a project using Ruby on Rails. I have absolutely ZERO experience with this platform. I'm not even really sure WHAT it is - is it just another platform like Apache/IIS that handles most scripting languages like PHP/JavaScript/etc., or is it a language of its own? The instructor recommended that we use Eclipse and get the Ruby plug in for development since we used Eclipse for our (worthless) Java class.

Any tips on what tools are best for development on this platform? Any tips on getting started with it? I usually learn stuff by finding a project and teaching myself enough to do the project.

I'm going through the rubyonrails.org website now, but thought I would drop a line to see if anyone had recommendations to speed up the process.

EDIT: OK.. So now I see that 'Ruby' is the language and 'Rails' is the platform it runs on. Ok. It's starting to make a little more sense now. Can anyone tell me why this is better than a LAMP or IIS/.NET setup?

 

[Areeda]

I haven't had much luck with it.
Ruby is an interpreted language kind of like PHP or Python. The Rails is the framework.

There are some good tutorials that I've used my favorite is http://www.javapassion.com/rubyonrails/

Good Luck!
Joe

 

[sba55]

Chris, I'd be happy to give you some pointers. My teams have been doing RoR for 4+ years....

 

[mantakos]

... So now I see that 'Ruby' is the language and 'Rails' is the platform it runs on. Ok. It's starting to make a little more sense now. Can anyone tell me why this is better than a LAMP or IIS/.NET setup?

Ruby is a programming language, and Rails is a "framework". You can think of a "framework" as "a bunch of code other people have already written for me that I can leverage to help me get my stuff done faster".

The L, A, and M of LAMP are still needed. You still need a host OS (e.g. Linux), a web server (e.g. Apache), a database (e.g. mysql), and a programming language, except now your programming language is going to start with an 'R' instead of a 'P', which makes for something far less easy to pronounce.

The typical arguments in favor of any "better" web development environment is, roughly, "I can make this thing that I need to make, and do it in a fraction of the time, writing code that, by virtue of the programming language it's written in, is infused with X% more wonderfulness"
-harry

 

[SkyHog]

RoR:

pbththththth