Why Use Rails by Dr Nic

Slide 1: They Laughed When I Learned Ruby on Rails But When I Started to Build Web Applications... Dr Nic Williams

Slide 2: • 10 000 users • 3 months • Re-used their global authentication system

Slide 3: • 600 users of 1500 RailsConf attendees • First release in 5 days

Slide 4: Websites are just text

Slide 5: 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>

Slide 6: Browsers don’t care what server you use

Slide 7: Browsers don’t care what operating system

Slide 8: Browsers don’t care what programming language

Slide 9: Browsers don’t care. They just want text

Slide 10: Pick what you like best

Slide 11: Real-world Developer problem

Slide 12: Developers are humans

Slide 13: Happy developers do more good things

Slide 14: Why Rails?

Slide 15: Convention over Conﬁguration

Slide 16: class Book < ActiveRecord::Base validates_presence_of :title has_many :orders belongs_to :author, :class_name => "User" end

Slide 17: class StoreController < ApplicationController def show @book = Book.find_by_permalink(params[:id]) end end http://mysite.com/store/drnic-book-on-rails

Slide 18: DRY Don’t Repeat Yourself

Slide 19: class Book < ActiveRecord::Base end Where are the attributes? Where is the conﬁguration?

Slide 20: Change is instant

Slide 21: Use it, break it, ﬁx it, trash it, change it

Slide 22: Why is Rails special?

Slide 23: Ruby (no more Java) Introspection Open classes Execute code in class deﬁnitions

Slide 24: #9 popular language http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index

Slide 25: One language for everything ActiveRecord Controller HTML helpers Ajax

Slide 26: Open Source. • 2200 participants • commiters, patchers, commenters, +1ers http://dev.rubyonrails.org

Slide 27: app models Every controllers application views looks the conﬁg same db test vendor

Slide 28: Flexibility is overrated

Slide 29: Constraints are liberating

Slide 30: All this creates happiness, plus better applications

Slide 31: Downsides?

Slide 32: Bad architecture is still bad architecture Its just for websites Java is evolving Groovy and Grails, + Open sourced Java

Slide 33: Getting started • www.rubyonrails.org • www.peepcode.com - $9 videos • www.drnicacademy.com - Australian training

Slideshare.net (beta)