Where is all the support for Ruby on Rails?

Ruby on Rails has taken a beating lately with all the down time occurring on Twitter. The Twitter developers have openly stated that Rails isn’t to blame but it hasn’t stopped all the FUD that has been posted.

I have never personally run into any of the scaling problems that have been blamed on Rails but I’ve also never built an application that receives the amount of use that Twitter does. So this has me wondering, where is all the support from the Rails community? 37signals has built several successful Rails apps and there are many others out there. It would be a shame if this pushes people away from a very good web development platform. Any Rails developers out there want to comment on this. Let’s get some positive comments and success stories out there!

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Rapid Web App Development with Ruby on Rails

Recently, I talked about a new web app I’ve been building for the past month and half, Marketing for Mavens. I wanted to provide you with a quick update (more details are available on the Marketing for Mavens blog). I’ve never been able to get my ideas translated into code so quickly and I have the Ruby on Rails framework to thank for that along with Rails community.

Anyway, I’ve been making some significant progress and I hope to have the beta available in May. For those unfamiliar with Marketing for Mavens, it’s a web application which combines content management with web analytics to give you the power to distribute custom web content to your visitors based on how they use your web site. It isn’t meant to be a full-blown content management system or web analytics package. It is purely for storing and distributing custom content. Statistics and trends are recorded for each visitor (called citizens) so you know who your top prospects are. In return, your citizens receive content which helps them better find the information they need. The goal, reduce the amount of “be everything to all people” content and increase the communication with your visitors. If you’re interested in learning more please check out the blog.

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Ruby on Rails: A month later

After working with Ruby on Rails for about a month now, I feel like I’m finally over the hump. I really love working with RoR but I had a difficult time getting into the mindset of working within a framework. Besides taking a few years off from coding, most of my experience had been working with PHP and before that ASP. The problem I had was that I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to do it with PHP but with RoR, usually there was a simpler way but I wasn’t always sure what that was or how to find (RoR 2.0 examples can still be hard to find).

Now, I’m about a month or so from launching my new web app in beta but the progress I’ve made with RoR still amazes me. The same could probably be said for using a PHP framework or any framework but I’ve really enjoyed learning a new programming language and have found RoR to fit all of my needs.

For those that are interested in finding out what I’ve been building over the past month, feel free to stop by www.marketingformavens.com. It’s currently a placeholder for when the beat goes live but as more progress is made on this project, additional details will be made available. You can also follow the progress on Twitter.

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Ruby on Rails 2.0 – Day 4

OK, so today is the fourth day that I’ve immersed myself in all things RoR and I have to say that it is starting to get much easier. It was tough in the beginning since so many of the best tutorials are based on pre-Rails 2.0 but as I’ve mentioned in my last two posts, I’ve found some very helpful resources. There were definitely a couple times where I was ready to throw everything out and go back to PHP, which I am much more familiar with, but RoR kept showing flashes of brilliance in how quickly a web app can come together when you know what you’re doing.

So now, I’m over the initial pain of learning a new programming language and framework. I’m by no means an expert. I’d still consider myself a beginner but now I’ve found more than enough resources to keep me going when I’m stuck.

Visit my del.icio.us link for all of the best resources that I’ve found to help you get started. Try not to get too frustrated in the beginning and you will soon receive the benefits of this well thoughtout framework. Trust me, it will be worth it in the end.

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Continuing to Learn Rails 2.0

A couple of other notes.

I’ve found it much easier to develop in rails using Aptana Studio Community Edition. Instead of having several windows open all over the place, Aptana condenses it into one area and it really improves the development environment.

I’ve also continued to update my del.icio.us tag with more resources including this tutorial by Fabio Akita which has proved to be quite helpful.

I’m still struggling with wrapping my head around adding plugins and some more of the complex coding but with the help of some of these tutorials I’m definitely making some progress.

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