I’ve been reading overview articles about Ruby and in particular Ruby on Rails, the web development framework on steroids, so I’ve decided it’s time I need to start taking a look at what is going on. If anything, I am thinking I should be looking at the approach taken by Ruby on Rails so I can simplify development in my own Java development using J2EE technologies where possible, and depending on how things look, start to think about whether I should be considering developing new applications using Ruby on Rails.
The first thing that got my attention was this video on the Ruby on Rails site. This video walks through demonstrating creating a Weblog type application using Ruby and Ruby on Rails, from scratch, in about 15mins. This is truely incredible.
What seems to make a lot of sense is the extensive use of generated template code for typical functionality in a web app – entry forms coupled to database tables, scaffolding code to create and edit data, and pagination code for retrieving and displaying lists.
So I’ve just got a copy of ‘Agile Web Development with Rails’, and I’ve starting to learn Ruby at the same time. I’ve started to put together some language notes for quick reference as well, which you can find here.