Ruby on Rails training for me this week

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So we have Charles Quinn in the building this week from the Big Nerd Ranch in Hotlanta training us on Rails/Ruby programming. If ever there was a programming platform to get you excited about programming again, it would be this. Anyone else getting to use this tool at work? Our whole company is migrating from using PHP/JSP to this as our primary development tool.

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Not sure what the enterprise capabilities are, but there are some impressive sites out there that run on Rails and they seem to be handling loads really well (i.e. the Basecamp people). I'm really green with this tool so I will let you know when I know more or can actually offer an intelligent opinion.

As much as I hated .NET when it was first around, developing with it these days is pretty dreamy. I have two ASP.NET apps I support here, and they are rock solid and extensible as all hell. Adding new features into our code takes zero time.

The big advantage I can see so far is speed of development and the intuitive nature of the Ruby language which underpins Rails. The downside so far to me is server configuration. It runs in it's own container (we are using Mongrel), and isn't like PHP where you have a MOD_PHP Apache module. You use a combination of Apache and Mongrel to run these things.

We're covering Testing today and I am thinking that this is the smartest implementation of a testing structure/mechanism I've ever seen. Not only that, if you use Textmate as an editor on the Mac you can test right out of the editor (i.e. you don't have to run tests at the command line). Ye Gods this shit is cool!

Ok, so my training course ended today. It took me 3 hours to build a fully functional course registration system from scratch, with error validation, unit/function and integration testing, AJAX inline updating and effects where appropriate, the works. I was also able to use this concept of RESTful URLs/routing to provide instant RSS feed capabilities, XML dumpage, CSV exports, you name it, with a few lines of code. This platform is freaking awesome.

Cool shit it does:

- the ability to write abstract Javascript using RJS (i.e. a few lines of code and you can have auto-completion on search fields, in-line completion, etc)
- Scaffolding - make an instant CRUD interface to any table (i.e. the platform will generate all of your user presentation, business logic and database model) with a SINGLE COMMAND - if you add a few options to that command, you can have it build all of the necessary DB creation code if you don't already have a database table built
- server-software-agnostic MOD_REWRITE functionality through Routing
- database-agnostic db access/functionality through Active Record

Overall, I think this is a superior platform for making a web application from scratch. Making an app that works with older legacy code gets a bit messy, as there is a good chance that your older databases do not conform to Active Record neatly (for example). Our whole company is moving from PHP to using this. We are all like this guy now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQXqWkWqnSw

(from the great Rails Envy website)