Developing Ruby On Rails Web Applications From Scratch?
Background
I'm interested in getting to grips with some Ruby On Rails. I have 4 years of programming experience in C #, ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC, SQL Server and most recently Silverlight, etc. Obviously I have a pretty good grasp of the various implementation routes you can go down when writing web application pages using C #, the problem is that I don't mean any clue about Ruby on Rails other than that Ruby is an amazing pure object-oriented language, and that Rails is a very fast way to build web applications using Ruby.
What am I after
So basically, I'm after a gap-filling session and help me understand the different ways to build web applications using ROR. Also, I found a few tutorials, but they seem rather vague, so any documentation / samples will be very handy to help me get started.
More details
Popular IDE for development (I've heard RubyMine is good for JetBrains). Possible database implementations (I know MySQL is an option, but which version?) Is HTML / CSS used for styling web applications? Interface plugins, if used? The general path to building a high Web 2.0 site that includes a fantastic user interface and a wonderful interactive interface.
... you get the idea, I just need a little advice to find.
Help with gratitude: -D
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I highly recommend starting by reading:
- Ruby Programming (also available online )
- Agile Web Development with Rails
You should start with the first one, but don't read it completely. Once you get the basics out of Ruby, you can switch to the Rails book, but feel free to switch back and forth as you become more familiar with Ruby and Rails.
The books are very well written and they are really interested in reading as far as technical books go. They do an excellent job of explaining the basics to beginners and also really dig deep. Within a few hours, you will receive answers to all your initial questions.
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When I tried to log into Rails, I bought this Rails for .NET Developers . It was very helpful to go. After that, the greatest value I found by watching the railscast video.
For the IDE, I am using Netbeans.
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Different people learn in different ways, but one thing that I find very useful for getting a real "feel" for Ruby on Rails is screencasts. The Rails site has a whole section dedicated to screencasts . For example, with a 15-minute blog video, you can watch someone work on an application on a blog and review all the steps along the way. It's not necessarily more informative than, say, a book, but it is easier to understand when you see it.
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The official Rails Guides are kept up to date - start with Getting Started, Railscasts provides quick instructions for many common tasks, and Agile Web Development with Rails (3rd Edition). The book is great if you want to sit down and read how it all works.
There's also tons of GitHub sample code where you'll find pretty much every plugin available, as well as a bunch of well-designed Rails apps to show you all the best practices.
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Regarding the specifics you asked about:
Many Rails developers don't bother with IDEs (they just use text editors like TextMate on Mac). MySQL is popular for production, but for local development, Rails is set up to use SQLite, which is quick and easy. Many developers are moving to a NoSQL data warehouse like MongoDb because development is faster than schemas and migrations. You will be using HTML and CSS, but you can use Haml to abstract the HTML templates. For an interactive "Web 2.0" site (as you request), you'll want to familiarize yourself with jQuery and CoffeeScript.
You asked the question back in October 2009, but I'm sure other people will continue to receive suggestions on the best way to get started with Rails. I hope you are already a Rails ninja!
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I started ruby on rails a few days ago using http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book by Michael Hartle. so far so good.
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This is my experience, I am at the stage where I can create simple applications. I like the code, at least to go to the right sources.
- Hartl Tutorial ... walk through this at a steady pace to understand the general basics. By no means can you absorb everything.
- Why Sharp Guide understands perfectly how to read code through history, making things enjoyable and memorable.
- Flexible guide on rails. This brought everything together, I went through the exercises, but stopped near the end. I read what I thought I needed to know how to build something that my work would use.
- Using railscast to complement my application.
I would recommend how to use apis, irC # rubyonrails and stack overflow. You would be surprised how people contribute and help you solve the problems you face.
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Re: IDE
Most Rails developers use VIM. Or at least the best ones use VIM. It is more powerful than IDE. I know and use at least 5 languages and VIM works well for everyone. I am using YADR . If you've been with the team, sometimes use VIM or Emacs or Geanie are your best options.
Re: Books
First of all, you must read the Ruby book. And after reading, I mean try examples.
The best book I've read on Ruby on Rails is probably Ryan Biggs .
Long-term software engineering would be a good book focused on teaching you some Ruby principles for practical reasons.
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