From: Xavier Noria <fxn@...>
Date: 2011-01-09T23:17:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Rails for Beginners?

On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Mike Stephens <rubfor@recitel.net> wrote:

> From what I've seen of Rails, it's quite clever clever, but it's also
> quite complicated. I really question whether people should assume they
> can download Rails, switch on the ignition and just drive off. I would
> have thought you would need to have quite a bit of basic Ruby experience
> before moving on to Rails.

In general, to program in L you need to learn some L. Rails is Ruby
programming, ergo you better learn some Ruby.

I have the feeling that Rails is not for beginners. It abstracts web
programming in a way that I think makes more sense for someone that
already knows web programming. In that situation you get a Ferrari to
run. It is just an opinion, it could be the case that you are
presented first with the framework and work fine... I've seen that
with Java people. But I doubt you'll understand what you are doing.

I think that learning web programming passes through HTTP and bare
CGI, where you're naked, you value as gold even being able to have the
query string parsed for you. There you understand what's all about,
and can build from that. Then the abstractions make sense and act as
shortcuts.

Other than that, I would not say Rails is complicated. Rails is rather
big, you need to invest time to master it.