Ruby on Rails is a framework that presents everyone with endless possibilities for learning to build web applications, quickly and easily. It is a useful tool for anyone, including – startups, code newbies and any other individual wanting to build a website and is facing difficulty using PHP & Java. It has following 3 modules:
1. Model Holds the data for your web application. For example, if you had a list of names and address it would be kept in the model.
2. View Displays the data. It is what the user sees, usually in the form of HTML templates.
3. Controller This fetches the data from the model and sends it to the view and vice-versa. The controller allows the user to edit, delete and read the data.
Furthermore, Ruby comes pre-loaded with Gems – pieces of pre-packaged code which help to speed up development and give you functionality during your development. The code that’s provided is written by a skilled professional and so you don’t have to attempt to write the code yourself. You may think of Gems like a WordPress plugin for a WordPress site. With Ruby on Rails, you do not have to spend time configuring files in order to run them.
It uses the Ruby programming language and covers both the front-end and the back-end so you can actually build a cool web application without having to rely on someone else to build these functionalities. Built on DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) philosophy, Ruby on Rails emphasizes that code is not repeated over and over again so that information can be found in a single and clear location within your application. It is a big plus especially when you need to collaborate with another developer.
Technology and programming evolves and changes quickly. Keeping pace and predicting the future trends is not just difficult, it’s close to impossible. Having said that, one of the biggest benefits “Ruby on Rails” have to offer is a real website that you can share with friends and others for it takes only a few days to come into being. It is one of those rare web application frameworks that will allow you to make quicker progress from the very beginning.
It is astounding to see how quickly it helps you to implement your ideas and the things you want to do. Both professionally and commercially, Ruby on Rails is a path breaking concept that has become extremely popular with startups because real-world web applications can be created quickly and easily.
In future, of course, nobody can predict how this programming framework will change but for now it is likeable and has a great community, so it’s going strong.
Some tips to best learn Ruby on Rails
#1 Read “The Well Grounded Rubyist” by David Black. It will help you learn Ruby language.
#2 Read the book Meta programming Ruby by Paolo Perrotta. It will help you understand meta programming.
#3 go through interactive tutorials on Code academy.
#4 try free Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, once you’re acquainted with Ruby.
#5 for details and queries, check out #RubyOnRails IRC channel on free node.
#6 Read Rails Guides to understand how different parts of Rails work in detail.
#7 for screen casts and learning web development in general, you may use Rails casts.
To gain more knowledge, check out the Rails source. Remember it’s huge and complex. Also, it keeps changing rapidly. To start reading and contributing to source, begin with railties/lib/rails/all.rband railties/lib/rails/commands.rb. To follow how boots rails, read the initialization guide and railties/bin/rails.
Ruby on Rails: Quick Facts
# Ruby on Rails is not a programming language – It’s a framework for building websites that combines the following programming languages – Ruby, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
# Who developed Ruby on Rails – David Heine Meier Hansson (DHH), a Danish programmer in 2003 # Technically, it implements Model-View-Controller, or MVC – MVC splits up the process of getting information and presenting it to the user.
# Get Started with Ruby on Rails – Install it using tools called installers. Most popular one is called Rails Installer, or you can go to rubyonrails.org to gather the information and files required to install Ruby on Rails on your computer.
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