I must admit when I first heard about Ruby on Rails, I was very sceptical, and when I saw the presentation at last years “Future of Webapps” conference in London, I wasn’t inclined to change my mind, there’s no need to go into any great detail here about why, just read many articles that knock Rails in some way and my reasons will be in there somewhere.
However, when this project came along, it struck me that it was perfect for a Ruby on Rails application. The app is little more than a data entry and display system, and Rails has a set of functionality that makes that almost trivial, I saw that at David’s presentation. I also want to get it done asap, I had a bunch of ideas for my brothers estate agency website that I never got the time time implement, and now they are used all over the show, by any half decent estate agency (basically a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft maps & house price/school league table/crime etc mashup.) and I don’t want to miss the boat with this one. Rapid is a relative term though, as I’m using this app to teach myself Rails, still faster than I could have done it in PHP though, which would have been my next choice.
I’ve been really impressed with Rails, and it has lived up to the hype so far. It’s been a pretty steep learning curve, and at times the needs of the app out stripped my understanding of Rails, but I’ve got a good book, and access to the Rails docs & mailing list, so I’m getting there.
So far so good with Rails, and I certainly don’t regret the choice.
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