Why Use Rails by Dr Nic

They Laughed When I Learned Ruby on Rails But When I Started to Build Web Applications... Dr Nic Williams

• 10 000 users • 3 months • Re-used their global authentication system

• 600 users of 1500 RailsConf attendees • First release in 5 days

Websites are just text

Google homepage <html> <head> <title>Google</title> </head> <body> <img src=\"/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif\"> <form action=\"/search\" name=f> <input name=q title=\"Google Search\"> <input name=btnG type=submit value=\"Google Search\"> <input name=btnI type=submit value=\"I'm Feeling Lucky\"> </form> </body> </html>

Browsers don’t care what server you use

Browsers don’t care what operating system

Browsers don’t care what programming language

Browsers don’t care. They just want text

Pick what you like best

Real-world Developer problem

Developers are humans

Happy developers do more good things

Why Rails?

Convention over Conﬁguration

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base validates_presence_of :title has_many :orders belongs_to :author, :class_name => \"User\" end

class StoreController < ApplicationController def show @book = Book.find_by_permalink(params[:id]) end end http://mysite.com/store/drnic-book-on-rails

DRY Don’t Repeat Yourself

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base end Where are the attributes? Where is the conﬁguration?

Change is instant

Use it, break it, ﬁx it, trash it, change it

Why is Rails special?

Ruby (no more Java) Introspection Open classes Execute code in class deﬁnitions

#9 popular language http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index

One language for everything ActiveRecord Controller HTML helpers Ajax

Open Source. • 2200 participants • commiters, patchers, commenters, +1ers http://dev.rubyonrails.org

app models Every controllers application views looks the conﬁg same db test vendor

Flexibility is overrated

Constraints are liberating

All this creates happiness, plus better applications

Downsides?

Bad architecture is still bad architecture Its just for websites Java is evolving Groovy and Grails, + Open sourced Java

Getting started • www.rubyonrails.org • www.peepcode.com - $9 videos • www.drnicacademy.com - Australian training

Why Use Rails by Dr Nic

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