So, why did I choose Ruby On Rails?  Well, it’s all the love mostly.

I don’t come from a web development background.  I come from a windows client development background.  When I wanted to learn about web programming, I starting reading various blogs, talking to friends, and reading up on things.  There was a lot of buzz around rails, and some amazing claims (like 10x faster development).  And while you really don’t get 10x faster development, you do essentially get to start working on the real problem right away, rather than building up the infrastructure needed to do so.

That’s what Rails really is, a well thought our framework for developing web apps extracted from real world experience.  If you need to learn more about what it is, check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails

http://www.rubyonrails.org/

If you are starting a new project, or are new to web programming, I strongly recommend you start with Rails.  I’m very glad I did.  Rails constricts you to a set MVS (model, view, controller) framework but that constraint lets you focus on the real problem you are trying to solve.

The Top Reasons to Start On Rails:

-          It’s easy to learn! 

-          There are lots of resources to learn (books, blogs, online articles and tutorials)

-          It’s a good community. (Lots of plugins and gems make almost everything you want to do very easy)

-          You can develop real applications in a short amount of time.

The biggest complaints I’ve Heard Against rails

-          It’s slow (true, it’s slower than php, but the mantra is, hardware is cheaper than programmer time!. There are some major sites running on rails (like twitter.com).  No matter what technology you choose you are going to hit scalability and speed issues at some point, so the architecture is more important than the technology.

-          Okay – that’s about the only complaint I’ve heard.

For my application, I also considered .Net, PHP Cake, and perl.  They all had pros and cons. PHP Cake was the runner up, but it just didn’t’ seem as mature as Rails, nor did it have the same buzz.

So far, while learning Ruby On Rails, I’ve found about 95% of what I want to know through google.  The Rails community rocks like that.  But hey, the world could always use some more information right? This blog will go over the paths I have taken, and will continue to take while moving from rails beginner to a more experienced rails developer.  The way I see it is this - I’ve learned a lot just by googling, but there are still lots of those moments where I come to a realization and wish I had known about it earlier. Hindsight is always 20/20, but hopefully some bits of my hindsight can be used as someone else’s foresight… I’ll be posting about the following:

• What tools/resources I found useful (and what ones I did not)
• Commentary and looks back on the order I ended up learning things (with as many of the ‘I wish I had…’ thoughts as possible)
• Answers to problems that I couldn’t’ find on google so I had to figure them out myself…
• Good design practices (both rails backend as well as CSS, usability, and anything else come across)

 My goal with this blog is to share my experience learning rails, learning ruby (which I’m sure a lot of rails newcomers will be doing at the same time as they are learning rails)…