Ruby on Rails: Thinking about a test drive.

Ruby on Rails has a lot of buzz going for it lately. Most of the code I write these days is PHP. I've been wondering if RoR is something that could be useful for me. I'm sure that taking the time to explore a new language will only benefit me; however, I'm aweful busy doing things in PHP and I haven't had a whole lot of downtime.

So, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for good articles and poking around with questions. Today, reddit posted a link to the best Ruby on Rails piece I've seen thus far - at least from a PHP programmers perspective. Most of the previous pieces I've read are attempts to debunk one language or the other. Julie does a wonderful job of writing a fair and informative piece that actually helped me understand the language and framework without making me install and learn it.

Ok - I must admit - I have installed RoR... I put it on a test server last week... but I haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet.

While RoR seems to be the Web 2.0 development platform of choice, I've been surprised to find out that there aren't any significantly well refined forums or CMS tools developed on the platform. I posted the question over on SitePoint and a couple of folks confirmed my findings - or lack of findings. Note: check the thread if you want to get involved in a RoR bulletin board project.

I'm sure that developing web applications will eventually be as easy as writing up some diagrams with a minimum amount of logic to code. Until then, we just have to use the tools we have.