[Rails] [ANN] "Ruby for Rails" now available in PDF!

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:31:56 -0000

Henry Turner wrote:
> Nice one!
> Beginners need to know where ruby ends and rails begins. And questions
> like "Do I need to know ruby to use rails?" are bad news!
>
To be fair to the beginners, more than one so-called expert has said
that one does not need to know "much" Ruby to use Rails, indeed to
develop a Rails application. Rails (today, anyhow) is to a great extent
a domain-specific language written in Ruby for developing
"Basecamp-like" web applications.

As Rails co-evolves with the Ruby and the Rails user communities, I
think the boundary between Rails and Ruby might just get *less* defined
than it is already. :) Before Rails, I for one had only heard of Ruby in
the context of computer music as a scripting language for a "Max-like"
package called PureData/Gridflow.

In other words, before Rails, to me Ruby was "just another scripting
language that I had to learn to use a package", like VBA is for Excel. I
would have never wanted to learn Ruby itself if it had not been for Rails.

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky