Ruby on Rails
developing web applications

Netguru
Poznań-based web development and consulting
company

• http://codetunes.com
• http://devguru.pl

we’re gonna...
• show you some live coding
• give a talk about “why choose rails”

web development
• before today
• today and tomorrow

web development now
• open-source technologies and tools
• server-side frameworks
• javascript libraries
• shorter development cycles

with Rails you focus on
• creating functionality, not creating code

Rails is...
• Rails is opinionated
• “If you try to design for the 20 percent of your
target audience who are power users, your design
may be not usable by the other 80 percent of
users”.
• if one feature satisfy 20% of your customers - it’s
not worth implementing
• convention over configurations

DRY, KISS
• Don’t Repeat Yourself!
• Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Code
• the less code you write, the more
maintainable and flexible your app is
• you don’t have to ship your product to
your customers - show it, get feedback,
make it better, deploy a new version, get
feedback...

most of the things are
done for you.
• routing
• database
• MVC
• data, time zones
• CSRF attacks
• ...and many more.

developer’s tools for...
• deployment
• testing
• maintaining code
• monitoring your production application

deployment
capistrano
webistrano

testing
• TDD
• shoulda, factory_girl, cruisecontrol

maintaining
code
svn
git
...and github

monitoring
production
application
hoptoad
newrelic

do things faster!
• gems
• plugins

community support
• blogs, wiki, railscasts, podcasts, e-books,
traditional books, irc channels, discussion
boards...
• it’s a great thing. really.

The Rails Myths: Rails
• ...is hard to deploy
• ...is hard because of ruby
• ...only speaks english

Rails is hard to deploy
• Phusion Passenger
• hosting Rails in Poland? no longer a pain in
the ...arm

Rails is hard because of
Ruby
• just try it yourself.
• http://tryruby.hobix.com
• it takes as much time as it would to learn a
framework in language that you already
know.
• and then things go faster. and they are
easier. and prettier. and better. believe me.

Rails only speaks
english
• UTF8
• internalization
• time zones

downsides of rails?
• convention over configuration
• it’s harder to satisfy geeks and power users

Questions, comments?