I’d just like to make an announcement. I am putting the Ruby and Rails books on the shelf to collect some dust. It may have just been a fad. I may, subconsciously, want to move away from web. Either way, I would like to tell you that I am now learning all about programming using Xcode, Cocoa, and Objective-C. I even think I can make it to the next meeting of CocoaHeads. That is all for now. Carry on.
The Rails folks have released Rails 1.2RC1. So I have removed the Agile Web Development with Rails—Second Edition book from my Christmas list. I already have the first edition and that wasn’t much help. Thanks, Mr. Thomas. Can we expect all the new features to be discussed in detail within this second edition? I should just wait for the third edition…or the fourth edition. Computer books tend to become out-of-date fast, but not this fast. I think a few people would get mad if paperback books used a “release early, release often” publishing schedule. Don’t you?
Maybe I shouldn’t even bother learning Ruby On Rails till the framework has matured and the frequency of new features has leveled off.
My attempts to learn Ruby On Rails have fallen short. Something about it just isn’t clicking with me right now. So I thought maybe I needed to try looking into another framework to see if another would be better. Plus, coming from using PHP for all my previous projects, I love the idea of using a pre-built framework to make my coding life a lot easier.
Somehow, I heard about Django. I quickly skimmed the Django documentation to get a feel for what it was and how I would accomplish simple tasks that I had a vague idea how they could be done through Rails. Then, after some Google-ing, I found the Snakes and Rubies video.
Yeah, I’m a year behind, but it was still an enlightening video. Here are some things I learned from it:
Somehow, after watching the video for over an hour, I still think Rails is the better choice for what I would like to do. It’s easier on the eyes. David is right; Ruby code looks beautiful. It is much easier to read and understand. Django, on the other hand, looks promising, but I think it may only be useful for building a customized CMS at this time.
I have even toyed with the idea of creating my own framework. But, no matter how much I think about where to begin, how to make it, and what language to use, I still come back to Rails. David developed it well.
I did another Google search on web application frameworks and saw that a few people were talking about Seaside, a framework built on Smalltalk. I’m not sure how I feel about these at this time. I may have more to say about these soon.
So, any ideas? Should I just stick with ugly ol’ PHP? Maybe I should look at what PHP5 can do. What are your thoughts?
Maybe I should just seriously learn C.
Yesterday I contributed to the Rails Community. I emailed a suggestion to the man who wrote one of the many Rails plugins out there. In a reply, he thanked me for the suggestion and informed me of the update to his plugin. And sure enough, there it is:
RubyForge: Custom Error Message plugin
Yeah, it’s a change to one line of the code, but it’s a start. I mean, I contributed to making it version 0.1.1. That has to count for something, right? ;)
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.
After testing out their hosting for two months, I have cancelled my TextDrive account. I am obviously not going to continue with their services.
First reason: The control panel is not intuitive. It is just text, links, and long-winded forms. According to some people in their forum, they have been promising a custom in-house control panel for at least a year now. I think they need it. Their Knowledge Base was helpful enough to get me playing with Rails, but it was a time-consuming process.
It’s time for a change of scenery. It’s time to look for a new web host. I need a place that can handle Ruby on Rails, and can handle it well. Sorry, ASO. You’re just not cutting it anymore. My site is slow and your Rails support isn’t quite up to speed in my opinion. I currently have a lifetime hosting plan with ASO and the lifetime thing appeals to me. I did a little fishing and found another hosting company that was offering a lifetime plan.
© Copyright 2004–2007 Mark Wiens