Ruby ( on rails)

[caveman]

Hi to all !!

Have not been around for many, many moons.

Started a new contract, a year ago, that's kept be busy -
like you cannot believe.

In the meantime installed fc5 on by dev machine and laptop.

Quick quiz -
as I've never been a fan (and don't anticipate in future) of Java..
Anybody played around with Ruby?
Is it a worth while effort? to get to know and use that is.
And if so - what is a decent IDE to get to know?
O Yes - Void - hope u're better after that fast and furious bike accident.
the picture sort of says it all - heh heh! I'm laughing with you - not at you!
regards

[ZiaTioN]

I will give you my 0.2 cents on the whole thing:

"Ruby on Rails" is simply a buzz word, just like AJAX. RoR is a framework of already proven technologies. These technologies are, Ruby, A Web Server, A relational database, and something that will give Ruby persistent database conenction (like FastCGI, SCGI, etc) to cut down on the overhead of connection and diconnection with each page refresh (db call).

Actually RoR uses AJAX to allow it to dynamically update data in the background without having to reload the entire page. The only part that Ruby the programming language actually plays in "Ruby on Rails" is that it is the language of choice to perform the background tasks of communication with the database. Most other popular language such as perl and python have similar frameworks. Slashcode (for perl) being one of them.

Ok now that we have distinguished between RoR and Ruby itself, let's talk Ruby. I myself do not have that much experience with it but it is known to be a powerful interpreted language. It is the closest thing to a true Object Oriented scripting language that you will find. In Ruby, everything truly is an object. If OOP is something you are interested in, Ruby would be a fine choice. Perl and Python are both object oriented too but OOP is truly Ruby's claim to fame, much in the same way that "readability" is Python's claim to fame and "TIMTOWTDI" is perl's claim to fame (along with the best regex pattern matching in any scripting language).

Bottom line is, sure Ruby would be a great choice for learning an interpreted language, but so would Perl or Python. Choose one that best fits your style and needs and run with it. DO NOT; however, get caught up in buzz words and marketing jargon.