Flex or Ruby On Rails for a new website?
I am looking for developing a website that will be database intensive enough and will play quite a few videos on it. My question is this: I have no programming experience and am trying to figure out if I should learn Ruby on Rails or Flex ... or both. I have several people working on this project with me who also want to help with development. Should we learn different languages? if yes, which ones?
I know that the best method would be to just hire an experienced developer, but we have no money and we want to learn how to build websites quickly in the future. Any advice will be taken into account. Thank!
I'm sorry, but programming is for programmers. I say this cus that you might have a great idea that will fail if a non-programmer tries to implement it.
Good news: if you can study to become a programmer. In this case, I suggest you learn Ruby and then Rails. Well, by studying this, you are sure to know when, where, and whether to use flex or not.
Good luck.
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Since you're not a coder yet, you just won't get a chance with Flex. Flex is really good at what it does, but most defiantly not a tool for the inexperienced.
Also, since you are not a coder yet, the chances of success even with Ruby are slim. Of course, there are many talented people out there who are self-taught, and coding is one of those things where raw talent and perseverance can take you a long way, but without any formal training and the ability to work alongside other coders, your chances of producing mince grows exponentially with the size and complexity of the project.
I currently have a large and permanent contract to clean up the clutter left by the self learning coder. The person in question impressed my client with a portfolio of several websites he put together that seemed to work fine (and the client didn't understand the code). A couple of years after he was finally fired, I'm trying to clean up monsters like a portfolio site hacked together from a custom shopping cart, zend, smarty, another custom templating system, and mounds of other code smashed together because the guy thought, that they look cool. The variables are badly named, the database tables have no indexes, the site runs like a pig and has a codebase 10 times that is necessary - the list goes on and on. My charges are 5 times my price. "predecessor, "but it would be much more cost effective for my client to use me from the start.
I would therefore strongly advise you to get a professional. If you really have to do it yourself, then at least try to find enough money to hire a consultant to act as a Guru for you. If you find that you have some kind of coding ability, then that may be enough. If you don’t even find that you can create something, then it’s virtual confidence that as the site develops, you will find that at some point you have serious problems due to the fact that you avoid the wrong choices. that you did in the beginning, you were too inexperienced to discover.
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I strongly urge you not to build your entire site in Flash; web standards exist for a reason, and unless you have a specific requirement that can only be met with your own plugin, you should stick to the standards.
Also, what you learn for Ruby on Rails development will be much more general. You will be using HTML, CSS, and Javascript to create a website with Rails that can be used with any webmap. Adobe uses its proprietary MXML markup format. The MVC design pattern used by Rails can be found in many other places, such as the Apple Cocoa toolbox and the Microsoft ASP.Net MVC framework.
Finally, the Ruby on Rails development tools are free. Although Adobe has released the Flex SDK under MPL, the runtime and IDE must be licensed.
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There are quite a few concepts to wrap around you when you are trying to create the kind of website that you are talking about and have to agree with Ricardo that programming is for programmers.
This doesn't mean you can't become a programmer, but try to break it down into easy-to-digest chunks and start by learning in areas where there is a lot of community support and a lot of open source material to learn from.
This suggests that it takes a minimum of several years of full-time experience to get anywhere to a level sufficient to design and build a mid-sized system.
I would even suggest looking at PHP (no war on war - I'm actually on the other side), mainly because there are so many open source projects out there and so many active forums. You may be able to find important pieces of your application already written for you. Once you have half a dozen languages under your belt, collecting new ones becomes much easier.
Have you considered using offline web applications? Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, ... etc.
This way, you can get your feet wet without biting off more than you can chew.
Also agree with Cruachan that at the very least you need to get someone who knows what they are doing to make sure you don't shoot in the leg without knowing it. Just because something works doesn't mean it's good.
Not wanting to prevent you from learning to program, far from it, but keep in mind that it is harder than it sounds and you have to learn to crawl before you walk, and if you try to skip the basics, it will bite you later. If it's a business venture, it will bite you hard.
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To answer your first question, Flex or Rails: Flex is a set of APIs and tools for creating .swf (compiled Flash) files. These files are loaded statically and can provide an interactive user interface. To dynamically load data or execute database queries, you need to talk to an application on the server. Rails is a set of APIs and tools for building a server-side application that (typically) listens for requests and dynamically generates a response (usually HTML, but often plain text or xml). Many developers use Flex and Rails together, where Flex shows the user interface, and Rails makes database queries and dynamically populates the UI elements on the screen.
My advice if you've never written a web application before starting with shelf tools is to try using Wordpress or the like. for managing content and posting videos with a third party (YouTube, PhotoBucket, Flickr, or the like), While it won't do everything you need, you might get something out there to help you figure out what features you really need users, and more importantly, giving you time to start acquiring cash or skills to do any custom development.
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I would recommend using Ruby on Rails if this is your first contact with web programming and programming in general. There are many options for web programming, but RoR has most of the third-party tutorials available in the form of books, videos, and blogs. Considering this is your first foray into programming, I would recommend supporting Rails simply because of the resources available. In addition, due to the focus on Rails, Ruby is receiving reasonable coverage as a general programming language, making it easy to find tutorials on simple Ruby programming.
Here are some resources to get you started:
For an introduction to programming concepts: Learn To Program is a great book for beginner programmers and it uses Ruby as its example language.
Once you've worked your way through this short book, I would recommend grabbing a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails . Not only is it a standard defacto introduction to Rails, but it's a great introduction to concepts related to web application programming.
You can also check out Peep Code for tutorial videos. They have a 2-piece video introduction to rails. If you're someone who learns better through screencasts than books, these are good resources.
Good luck with your project. To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much about not being a programmer, everyone starts somewhere. Be careful, ask questions, try to build things up in small chunks, and don't be afraid to throw away your first try after you've learned enough to run into some bugs.
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I will not say that if you want to be a programmer, prepare yourself for a clock in front of a computer screen. You have to learn everything from the beginning and develop something where the professional needs help, i.e. Flex and ROR together.
I'm a professional programmer, but I don't like the other tone when they discourage beginners as useless (remember that everyone has to start from scratch)
anyway, if you feel like climbing the mountain, do it differently, ask someone for help, and it could be good books, study hours or hire a professional + $$$ to spend.
Good luck.
I would normally recommend doing this in Rails because it's awesome. In your case, I would say: do it in PHP because it's easier and you can hack easily. Rails is pretty tricky for a non-programmer, you need to wrap your head around the concept of MVC, object oriented programming ...
As much as I would like to tell you to go with rails, I think it will just lead to a completed project.
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