• Coding

  • The Path to Ruby and ROR

Good morning freinds, I have always considered myself a generalist especially in this period where instead of becoming focused on one technology I am trying to get an idea of many others by implementing small projects in each. I am trying to do this now as I am still in the academic world so there is still time for learning and I don't have any thing critical.

So I was thinking of checking out Ruby and later Ruby on Rails by the end of this semester maybe. Some facts that make me interested in Ruby and ROR specifially:

- It's open source
- ROR promotes convention over configuration and asp.net MVC(which is the only thing I like in .net) was inspired by it.
- You can host your web apps on Linux servers (no need to be tide to the windows platform as in .net)
- The language is easy easy and simple (Thats what I hear)
- The ROR framework enhances productivity and saves time.
- You can code ruby from you linux box. No need for windows nor a heavy IDE such as VS.

Plus I am an extremely curious person, I just can't focus on one technolgy without knowing what the others are and if they may be better.

So do you advise me to discover that world? Is Ruby and ROR popular in the business world especially in Lebanon?(Though I doubt that it is more popular than .net and Java, yet...). As for developer salaries also, I heard they get paid high usually due to the shortage of Ruby developers, is that correct?

In addition, if you know any good resources for learning please let me know about them.

Thanks for your advice :)
Ayman, none of the points you mentioned is key to learning ruby or rails.

The sheer power of ruby and rails is due to it's vast community, the rest is just icing on the cake.

Everything you need for rails can be found here: http://rubyonrails.org/

From my part, I enjoy Ryan Bates's screencasts : http://www.railscasts.com/

P.S.: I have a rails book lying at home if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Rails-Experts-Voice-Development/dp/1430224339/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299660820&sr=1-4
@Kassem thanks, I will download them one day.
xterm wroteAyman, none of the points you mentioned is key to learning ruby or rails.

The sheer power of ruby and rails is due to it's vast community, the rest is just icing on the cake.

Everything you need for rails can be found here: http://rubyonrails.org/

From my part, I enjoy Ryan Bates's screencasts : http://www.railscasts.com/

P.S.: I have a rails book lying at home if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Rails-E … amp;sr=1-4
So the only advantage of Ruby On Rails is the community behind it? That's it? No other compelling aspects of the technology itself?
Actually Ruby as a language is pretty aweome in and of itself, you can do things with a lot of clarity and less time because it gives you the facilities you need to get things done.

I recently came across this blog post which humorously compares Ruby to PHP. I couldn't stop laughing at this quote:
Also, I get the feeling that the developers of ruby were being deliberately facetious when they thought up the language. Fine, let's go as far as agreeing that everything is an object. But even classes? "Classes are objects of class Class"? Surely someones having a laugh at those poor ruby developers expense.
It's hilarious but it also shows you the kind of power that Ruby gives you. The ability to treat a class as an object and manipulate it as such opens up a lot of possibilities.

The Ancient Lisp Hackers™ would say: "code is data and data is code".
AymanFarhat wroteSo the only advantage of Ruby On Rails is the community behind it? That's it? No other compelling aspects of the technology itself?
You misunderstood, what you mentioned in your bullet points applies to several other frameworks and languages.

Ruby is awesome, RoR is awesome. But so is Python/Django, Groovy/Grails and several other pairs. What differentiates the R/RoR from the rest, is the insane community that backs it up, the great resources (ie: railscasts) that are available online built by that community, the amazing components (ie: gems) that are available built by that community, the amazing services (ie: heroku) that are available built by that community.

In the end, a language/framework's power comes from the community behind it.

Catch my drift homie? :-)

P.S.: Do you want that book?
@xterm, aha I get your point now :) As for the book when I need it I will let you know for sure, I won't be getting into ruby before the end of the semester because I need to focus on my studies and uni related projects for now. Have a good day and thanks :)
That's great! I highly recommend giving Ruby and Ruby on Rails a try!

I develop almost exclusively in Ruby, and it's really awesome! I would say that the best thing about using Rails is that you get to use the Ruby language.

There are a few of us here that use Ruby, don't hesitate to ask questions as you get started. Good luck!
3 months later
I've just downloaded Ruby Essential Training from Lynda.com and I will be getting into RoR soon (as soon as I get my hands on a RoR video training series).

Why I decided to get into Ruby and RoR although I'm really happy with ASP.NET MVC?

- It can be deployed to a Linux based environment
- I'd like to explore other language flavors (might try F# soon as well)
- I've heard nothing but great feedback about RoR and the whole "culture" of Ruby
- Ayman makes sense when he says I should not limit myself to one language/framework :)
- Would definitely be good for my career as a developer on the long run (more job opportunities, more knowledge, more experience...etc)

Ok so is there some good IDE that is the defacto in the Ruby (RoR) world? I'm not asking for anything as good as Visual Studio 2010 (because there isn't anyway), but at least something with good code coloring, code hinting, user friendly interface, good integration capabilities, easy refactoring... this kinda stuff.
@Kassem, i gave Ayman "LiveLesson Ruby on Rails" tutorial, it's around 8gb. When you meet Ayman, just take the tutorial from him, it might be better than Lynda RoR.
m0ei wrote@Kassem, i gave Ayman "LiveLesson Ruby on Rails" tutorial, it's around 8gb. When you meet Ayman, just take the tutorial from him, it might be better than Lynda RoR.
Yes! That is exactly what I'm looking for! I've already sent the links to LiveLessons RoR to Georges although I did not expect him to download them for me because they're too huge :P so yeah thanks a lot m0ei! :)

Ayman, we need to talk! :P
I've been reading a book called Pro ASP.NET MVC2 from Apress, the following snippet is relevant:
In 2004, Ruby on Rails was a quiet, open source contribution from an unknown player. Suddenly it hit fame, transforming the rules of web development. It’s not so much that it contained revolutionary technology, but more that it took existing ingredients and blended them in such a wonderful, magical, delicious way as to put existing platforms to shame.

By applying MVC architecture (an old pattern that many web frameworks have recently rediscovered), by working in tune with the HTTP protocol instead of against it, by promoting conventions instead of the need for configuration, and by integrating an object-relational mapping (ORM) tool into its core, Rails applications more or less fell into place without much expense of effort. It was as if this was how web development should have been all along; as if we’d suddenly realized we’d been fighting our tools all these years, but now the war was over.

Rails shows that web standards compliance and RESTfulness don’t have to be hard. It also shows that agile development and TDD work best when the framework is designed to support them. The rest of the web development world has been catching up ever since.
and that was a book about ASP.NET MVC2.

I advice you to start learning the Ruby language at first, it doesn't make any sense (for me at least) to dive into Rails without knowing at least the basics of Ruby, and the basics are not that simple as it requires a different way of thinking since Ruby is quite different then C# or Java ... etc ... . In the Ruby community there is only 1 book to learn about Ruby and it's THE Ruby book: Pragmatic Bookshelf - Programming Ruby 1.9, also known in the community as PickAxe. That's what I'm currently reading. After that, you can read whatever you want about the Rails framework, there are a lot of screen casts and tutorials available on the internets.
@ali.koubeissi: I've read that book (Awesome book by Steve Sanderson by the way), and it is in fact what got me interested about exploring the Ruby world ever since. After all, the author himself says that ASP.NET MVC was initially inspired from Rails. If ASP.NET MVC is that awesome, then Rails has to be as well! So at least, it's worth investing the time in learning this framework.
I advice you to start learning the Ruby language at first, it doesn't make any sense (for me at least) to dive into Rails without knowing at least the basics of Ruby, and the basics are not that simple as it requires a different way of thinking since Ruby is quite different then C# or Java
Yup, definitely. That's why I downloaded Lynda.com - Ruby Essential Training which I will be starting with first. Then I can move to learning some Ruby framework, and in my case that would be Rails.
Avoid using an IDE, but if you insist, there's Aptana RadRails.

Edit: Be sure to subscribe to the rails mailing list by the way.
A good resource for beginners is Rails For Zombies. It is interactive and is quite motivating for beginners.
I advice you to start learning the Ruby language at first
I would take a different approach. I think starting with rails then moving back to Ruby is the way to go, provided the desired outcome is to become good at Rails (and that Ruby knowledge is a mere by-product).
Michael Hartl puts it in a good way:
Ruby is a big language, but fortunately the subset needed to be productive as a Rails developer is relatively small. Moreover, this subset is different from the usual approaches to learning Ruby, which is why, if your goal is making dynamic web applications, I recommend learning Rails first, picking up bits of Ruby along the way. To become a Rails expert, you need to understand Ruby more deeply, and this book gives you a good foundation for developing that expertise.
Make sure to check out his book (free, online): http://ruby.railstutorial.org/
xterm wroteAvoid using an IDE, but if you insist, there's Aptana RadRails.
Any reason for that?
Kassem wroteAny reason for that?
Yes Kassem, it'll hold you back. There's nothing faster than a text editor/terminal feedback loop when dealing with a dynamic language.
Ruby is a dynamic language?! Urgh! Let's hope I could live with that...
The question you should be asking yourself, is will you be able to go back once you've tasted it.
xterm wroteThe question you should be asking yourself, is will you be able to go back once you've tasted it.
LOL alright, I hope it's as good as you put it. I wouldn't be upset about it, at all :)