Ruby on Rails Fundamentals, Class 1

Ruby on Rails Fundamentals
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Aug 25 - Sep 29

What is Ruby on Rails?
Ruby is a language. Rails is a framework.
If you want to understand Rails, you need to be fluent in Ruby.
Rails applications are Ruby applications.

The Ruby Language
Originally by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto
“Ruby is designed for programmer productivity and fun, following the principles of good user interface design. He stresses that systems design needs to emphasize human, rather than computer, needs.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)#History
Ruby 1.0 was released in 1996.

What you will learn
Ruby
Language concepts
Language syntax
Common patterns
Rails Framework: creating web applications
Scaffold
Model, View, Controllers
SQL Queries
HTTP with REST and Routes
Log files and debugging
Associations

How you will learn
Exploration: experiment, play
Test-Driven Development (TDD)
Initially as a learning methodology
Later as a development methodology
Ask questions
Learn to find your own answers
Read
Plus whatever works best for you

Class Structure
Talk
Live Coding Demonstrations
In-class coding
Coding at home (or in social groups)
Google Group

Ruby Language Overview
Dynamically typed
Interpreted
Can be modified at runtime
Object oriented
Blocks & lambdas
Nice support for Regular Expressions

Lets get started
IRB: InteractiveRuBy
>> 4
>> 4 + 4

Everything is an object
“test”.upcase
“test”.class
“test”.methods

Everything evaluates to something
2 + 2
(2+2).zero?

Methods are Messages
thing.do(4)
thing.do 4
thing.send “do”, 4

Operators are Methods
thing.do 4
thing.do(4)
thing.send “do”, 4
1 + 2
1.+(2)
1.send "+", 2

Iteration
my_list = ["cat", "dog", ”world"]
my_list .each do |item|
puts "hello" + item
end

Test-First Learning
Similar methodology to TDDwith a different purpose and workflow
Teacher writes the test
Student implements the code

Test-Driven Development
Design
Focus / Project Management
Creation of Tests

Time to Write Code