A List Apart

Issue № 257

The why and how of Ruby on Rails.

Getting Started with Ruby on Rails

by Dan Benjamin28 Comments

The "how" of Ruby on Rails: Hivelogic's Dan Benjamin prepares non-Rails developers, designers, and other creative professionals for their first foray into Rails. Learn what Ruby on Rails is (and isn't), and where it fits into the spectrum of web development and design. See through the myths surrounding this powerful young platform, and learn how to approach working with it.

Creating More Using Less Effort with Ruby on Rails

by Michael Slater25 Comments

The "why" of Ruby on Rails comes down to productivity, says Michael Slater. Web applications that share three characteristics, they're database-driven, they're new, and they have needs not well met by a typical CMS, can be built much more quickly with Ruby on Rails than with PHP, .NET, or Java, once the investment required to learn Rails has been made. Does your web app fall within the RoR "sweet spot?"

More from A List Apart

Columnists

Rachel Andrew on the Business of Web Dev

You Can’t Do Everything

In any given day I can find myself reading up on a new W3C proposal, fixing an issue with our tax return, coding an add-on for our product, writing a conference presentation, building a server, creating a video tutorial, and doing front end development for one of our sites. Without clients dictating my workload I’m in the enviable position of being able to choose where to focus my efforts. However, I can’t physically do everything.

From the Blog

Matt Mullenweg on Yahoo-Tumblr

“We’re at the cusp of understanding the ultimate value of web publishing platforms, particularly ones that work cross-domain.”–Matt Mullenweg of WordPress.

ma.tt