Journey to Ruby on Rails

My journey to Ruby on Rails (ROR) was typical of the journeys of all who attempt to deal with non-Microsoft technologies : it involved entire weekends spent just installing; figuring out how to install; figuring out dependencies; figuring out a decent tutorial (that is not obsolete); translating the tutorial to work with your install; if after all that everything works then we will be lucky.

Lucky because the more the steps the higher the likelihood of failure. Microsoft's technology reduces the steps to a goal but still provides access to configuration ; that is something the rest of the development community has not learned/ implemented/ ingrained primarily because we have non technical "forceful" personalities leading the other side.

So I started working on Ruby on Rails around March 22nd or so after my last Winter class at Stanford. I went through Friends of Ed Rails Made Easy (it was not!) the best part of rails was reserved for the concluding chapter! That is typical of folks who are suffering from poverty of goodness : they force you to go through the motions reserving the "good stuff" for the end because they want to "reward the patient" or "inculcate good habits" or "teach discipline".

If we wanted to learn that we would go to a boot camp! Show us what is so great about ROR immediately, right? It takes a great deal of courage and generosity to get to the point and get to it quick and give the reader the meat and potatoes right away. May God help us, I shall attempt to do that in the next post.