Widgizit » ruby on rails http://blog.widgizit.com Everybody's doing it. Well... they should be. Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:30:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Getting closer http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/05/09/getting-closer/ http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/05/09/getting-closer/#comments Thu, 10 May 2007 01:21:13 +0000 blogger http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/05/09/getting-closer/ I’ve made considerable progress since my last post. I have a first-cut working Ruby on Rails application built on a development box – an Ubuntu VM (on Windows). The first round of widgets (Amazon-based) are ready to go. Much of the build process for the widgets and the web site is automated. I’ve signed up with Slicehost to host the site – they come highly recommended and the price was extremely compelling. I’m now coming up to speed on things like DNS configuration, setting up a scalable production web server environment, and maneuvering around Linux. While it’s been an eye opener as to all of the components needed to get a web application off of the ground (and I’m sooo barely scratching the surface), I’ve also been thrilled at the plethora of readily available tutorials, how-tos, forums, wikis, etc. to make this easier. Many others have trodden similar ground to get their fledgling efforts off of the ground, and this is a very good thing.

]]> http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/05/09/getting-closer/feed/ 1 Coming over to the server side http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/04/23/coming-over-to-the-server-side/ http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/04/23/coming-over-to-the-server-side/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2007 01:23:58 +0000 blogger http://blog.widgizit.com/index.php/2007/04/23/coming-over-to-the-server-side/ The past week or so has found me coming up to speed on Ruby on Rails. I am developing portions of the site using RoR, and it’s been interesting so far. Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an open source web framework. The tag line is “convention over configuration,” meaning it’s designed to maximize out-of-the-box common web app functionality, but it allows you to customize/override anything you don’t like. It’s based on Ruby, an interpreted, OO scripting language.

I chose RoR because designed with the programmer in mind – it’s extremely powerful, but it makes no apologies for those who do not understand the fundamentals of distributed web application development, automated builds, and test-driven development. I feel that the learning curve has been relatively steep, more on the web app side than anything else. That said, as someone with a strong Java background, I like the evolutionary step that Ruby has taken and feel comfortable with the tools – Rake vs. Ant, Test::Unit instead of JUnit, etc.

I’m reading a book called Rails for Java Developers and I highly recommend it if you are a Java developer and want to learn RoR – relevant, concise, with an excellent comparison between Java and RoR approaches.

]]> http://blog.widgizit.com/2007/04/23/coming-over-to-the-server-side/feed/ 0