markwiens.net

It was about 2 years ago when I first read the AJAX (or is it Ajax?) article by Jesse James Garrett. I thought it sounded like an interesting idea and possibly a good technology to welcome to my skillset. Unfortunately it involved Javascript, a language I wasn’t too fond of using. But I printed the article and looked at a couple other sites on the subject. A week went by and I was over it. Now it’s hot stuff and big names like Google are using it in most of their applications.

Then Ruby on Rails was released to the public in July 2004. I had been using Basecamp, from where RoR was extracted, at my job. And I thought Basecamp was a pretty good application to use there. I checked out some of the early talk about Rails and it led me to the Ruby site where there were some basic tutorials on how to get programming with Ruby. PHP was my main focus then and the thought of learning another language didn’t sound like the smartest thing to do at the time. So that dream was over by the end of the day.

But wait! How could I pass up learning Ruby and Rails? How could I pass up this opportunity especially with those clever screencasts? Who couldn’t turn their back on Rails after seeing the weblog built in less than 15 minutes. I know I couldn’t! So I bought some books and strapped myself in for a long journey into Ruby and Rails. More on that journey coming soon.

I even have an idea for my first real web application on Rails. I purchased three domains. My project is currently a secret and I won’t reveal what the domain names are. But since Rails is so easy to use, I should have the project up for the public by November 1st. You can stay “tuned” because I may slip a couple little hints here and there before then.

Now some people have been programming Ruby before Rails even came about. And some people have been using Rails since it was first released to the public. But I still think I have a chance. I can get myself up to speed. They did mention Rails was easy, right?

Lastly, don’t forget about the evolving world of CSS. Because CSS3 is still in its prime and unsupported by most browsers, I think I can jump into this early. Maybe I can actually be ahead on this one while others try to catch up. I better get started.