Posts Tagged ‘rails’

The Rubynator

// August 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

LSRC-2009-webMy friend Geof has for years attempted to persuade of me of the pure awesomeness of Ruby on Rails, and the many ways that it excels over any other language/framework. So in honor of his efforts to constantly evangelize me with the “Oh is much easier in Rails” (and of Dr. Doofenshmirtz, one of my cartoon heroes), I think I’ll start calling him The Rubynator.

I’m no neo-luddite, and I’m generally an early adopter, but have approached Ruby and Rails with only an arms-length interest. But having spent some time this summer doing my own research, I’ve become convinced to embrace it on a couple of big projects at work that are separate platforms from our core product. I’m looking forward to it. One thing I’ve noticed (how can you miss it, they practically yell it), is how much I enjoy and appreciate the culture that’s developed alongside Ruby on Rails in terms of making applications and code elegant, concise, readable, and easy to maintain. The Rails framework seems to make it easy to do things the right way, and I believe the lessons we’ll learn in developing RoR applications will help my team and I become better developers in general, regardless of the development environment we use, and I’m excited about that.

I’m also looking forward to attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference this weekend in Austin and seeing what I can learn.

Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby

// June 22nd, 2006 // No Comments » // Technology

I really know little about the Ruby programming language — myself mired instead in LAMP technologies with a splash or JEE now and then. But I have friends who are zealous in their faith that it will soon be the premier language-du-jour for rapid development. These are the folks who go to user group meetings and regularly curl up with a good programming book for fun.

God bless ‘em.

That said, I think the authors of programming books have something to learn from the author of Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. Aside from it’s chief value in being free (as in beer), the style of the book is easy to read and very funny. I can’t speak intelligently to it’s value as a real Ruby learning tool as I’m not (yet) interested in going down that road and read it quickly. But man, it was fun to read.

The simple graphics, hilarious cartoons, big fonts, and conversational style make it easy to follow. Some folks prefer man pages or Javadocs, but for me, this format beats the Head Rush® style any day.

Read more at Poignantguide.net.