really understand Ruby on Rails and Ruby in general

I’m at the point where I know where to go in order to implement my thoughts. For example, I know the directory structure of Rails, and all the basic thinking behind how it works. I understand the cool things that make Ruby unique, but I don’t really know how to use them right. I can create anything I want, it just takes a lot of time reading docs and futzing around. I’m still not a virtuoso.

To continue the musical metaphor; I’m still playing things sloppy and slow, and still just learning the outdated sheet music from inside the piano bench.

My goal, however, is to become an extemporized jazz master.

I’d be awesome to some day actually write the app while still in the first meeting with a client.

bugeats.net

For years, I was happy running Tiny Sofa linux on my server. However, in the past year or so, the updates have been far and few between. If I were investigating the distro today, I’d say it was a dead project.

So I stuck a new hardrive in there, and installed straight Debian. I like the way it handles the Apache config anyway.

Yes, it lives in a milk crate under my desk.

So, I took the opportunity to turn it into a FastCGI, Ruby on Rails eating monster, and I’m in the process of getting Typo up and running. All my other services, SVN, etc, have been xfered.

Speaking of, Ruby gets another gold star for this wonderful little project, RSCM. I was using Python for my SVN trickery before, but RSCM does a much much better job.

Also, Ruby’s built-in XML parser, REXML totally kicks ass. Again, much better than the Python lib I was using before. Alright, I just reformatted my server to accomodate RoR. I’d say I’ve been sold.

I just figured out what Ruby blocks are all about (holy shit!).

Native /regex/ is amazingly cool as well.

I’m now choosing Ruby over Python because I like the color red better than green.

TurboGears screwed me (partially my fault, but whatever), and now I’m going to spend a little more time getting intimate with RoR, which is the kid on the block that started this whole mess.

There are some things about Turbogears that I miss (SQLObject, CherryPy), but I’m fully willing now to drink the cool-aid and really try to grok RoR, and appreciate some of the zen that might be hiding in there.

Coming from Python, Ruby stinks a little of Perl, and some of the stuff is just plain wierd for me. Blocks, all that. Arrays are nice in that they’re as powerful as Python lists, but also unified like PHP Arrays.

Rails is fun so far, but I’m starting to notice that they were serious about convention over configuration. Some of the conventions are a little offensive to me (what’s going on with the plurlization of the db table names!?), but I’m now willing to really let them sink in.

Seriously. A video, especially if it has no voiceover, is about like pointing and grunting. We don’t need that anymore; we’ve got the basic idea. Now we need explanations.

The existing API documentation sometimes verges on what we need: lengthy, human-readable, addressed to common concerns. But more often it’s like a catalog. We need a map. We need a guide. We need the structure of this thing.

I’m aware that some books are coming out in the summer. We need the map now, but I suppose we get it when we get it. In the meantime, take the time you would have spent on a video and use it to put together some nice, plain English words that EXPLAIN.