Getting Started with RUBY ON RAILS

Ruby on Rails is an extremely productive web application framework written in Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson. This course gives you a complete understanding on Ruby on Rails.

Before we ride on Rails, let us recapitulate a few points of Ruby, which is the base of Rails.

Ruby is the successful combination of −

• Smalltalk's conceptual elegance,

• Python's ease of use and learning, and

• Perl's pragmatism.

  
  

  Why Ruby?

  Ruby originated in Japan and now it is gaining popularity in US and Europe as well. The following factors contribute towards its popularity −

  • Easy to learn

  • Open source (very liberal license)

  • Rich libraries

  • Very easy to extend

  • Truly object-oriented

  • Less coding with fewer bugs

  • Helpful community

  Although we have many reasons to use Ruby, there are a few drawbacks as well that you may have to consider before implementing Ruby −

  • Performance Issues − Although it rivals Perl and Python, it is still an interpreted language and we cannot compare it with high-level programming languages like C or C++.

  • Threading model − Ruby does not use native threads. Ruby threads are simulated in the VM rather than running as native OS threads.

This course has been designed for beginners who would like to use the Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications.

You need to have a basic knowledge of Ruby and object-oriented programming to understand this course. In addition, you need to be familiar with internet and websites programming in general.