Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...
Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.
Monday May 14, 2007
Getting Started with Ruby-on-Rails
I've never used Ruby or Ruby-on-Rails but now that JavaOne 2007 is over, I decided to spend some time understanding the hype behind it. I'll publish this as a multi-series entry sharing my experience.
Ruby-on-Rails main download page requires you to download Ruby, RubyGems and then install Rails. And even then it's missing Apache and MySQL. For a first timer, this is way too many packages to download and install. Anyway there is InstantRails containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all pre-configured and ready to run but this is hidden down in the page. The first approach of downloading each component individually and then installing/configuring them does not seem to match the promise of "optimized for programmer happiness".
After spending sometime with piecemeal approach (Ruby 1.8.5-24, RubyGems 0.9.3, Installing Rails) and then finding out (Ruby-on-Rails revisited) to install MySQL separately (and who knows other components), I'm planning to use InstantRails.
Technorati: rubyonrails rora> ruby
Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0 | Comments[2]
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This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.
You might find APRESS' "Begining Ruby on Rails E-Commerce" useful. It covers quite a bit of ground while remaining focused on a full e-commerce application, containing all that is required in such applications, except perhaps, fancy user interfaces.
The question that arose in my mind as I read this book and played with the ideas contained in it was whether Ruby-on-Rails programs were any easier to maintain, and in general, what was the maintenance cost involved in maintaining them. Are we losing flexibility for maintenance as we gain speed of development.
It was good seeing you at JavaOne.
Posted by M. Mortazavi on May 14, 2007 at 08:05 AM PDT #
If you are on Mac OS X, Hivelogic has some excellent posts on getting everything set up.
If you are keen on checking out Rails, the Pragmatic Programmer book is still the best. The first part of that book walks one through the process of developing an application - iterating through versions adding features. Of course, don't forget the DHH blog video!
Posted by Binil Thomas on May 14, 2007 at 10:34 AM PDT #