Master Ruby on Rails

The recent RailsConf in Portland certainly gave me lots of opportunities to learn. But it also highlighted how much I still have to learn!

On the sharing front, volunteering to talk about what’s new in Rails 2.1 at the Sydney Rails meetup last night gave me the chance to not only share that knowledge but learn in the process.

In the new year I’ll be working more intensively with Rails so I expect to get further up the “Mastering Rails” tree. Looking forward to the opportunity.

I’ve started work on another Rails app. When it’s in good enough shape I plan to contribute it to the Ruby on Rails Oceania repository. And, because it’s Rails, it shouldn’t be long before I have the first version of the app ready!

I’ve recently set up my current project to be deployed using Capistrano. Having heard so many complimentary things about this tool from Jamis Buck, it has been very satisfying to use it.

It took a little bit of effort to get it up and running but now it’s so easy to deploy changes once I’ve committed them to my svn repository.

This Thursday I’m presenting a talk at work (a Java EE shop) about my experience with Ruby on Rails. I have the slides and demos just about ready to go. Hopefully it will promote some good discussion and provoke some thinking about how to simplify web app development.

Wish me luck!

I’ve been experimenting with Rails in earnest for about six months now and am eager to keep exploring and deepening my understanding.

Topics to explore in more depth soon include deployment and Ajax.