Should I learn Ruby on Rails?

[williell]

I would like to be able to go out and develop a website for e-commerce, forums, and social networks with success, does anyone think that Ruby on Rails is a good programming language for this purpose? I have had some experience with HTML and JavaScript.

 

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[LamboMP]

PHP should suffice for the above requirements, IMHO.

 

[dkt91]

Unless you're not planning to become a coder I suggest you don't learn any language at all or just the basics.
Big money isn't made by the coding process but by whatever has been coded. Go and hire an expert!

 

[White8]

Unlike you're not planning to become a coder I suggest you don't learn any language at all or just the basics.
Big money isn't made by the coding process but by whatever has been coded. Go and hire an expert!

I just finished a project using a coder out of Russia with 25 years of experience who worked for $6.00/hr.

It's not cost effective for me to spend the time to learn the code.

There are also good open source products out there that could be modified such as Zen Cart rather than having a coder start from scratch.

 

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[neverfastenough]

I just finished a project using a coder out of Russia with 25 years of experience who worked for $6.00/hr.

It's not cost effective for me to spend the time to learn the code.

There are also good open source products out there that could be modified such as Zen Cart rather than having a coder start from scratch.

Could you PM his contact info?

 

[williell]

Thanks, I appreciate the advice, and will hire an expert to save the time to work on other projects.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Unless you're not planning to become a coder I suggest you don't learn any language at all or just the basics.
Big money isn't made by the coding process but by whatever has been coded. Go and hire an expert!

I will have to slightly disagree with you on this.

First, this decision is very personal. If you have the aptitude to pick up a language and quick, I'd recommend it. Why? The ability to code a system from concept to completion is very powerful. Think of it like having the ability to build a house all by yourself; yup, you have the expertise to lay foundation, frame, roof, plumb, electric, HVAC -- except your not building homes, but business systems.

Second, I've mentioned many times that whatever business you get involved in, you will have competitors. Whenever I discovered a new competitor, the first question I wanted to know was this: Is this website coded inhouse or was it outsourced to someone in India? This question was important because it really told me the efficacy of the competitor to compete. If the website was coded inhouse, I viewed the competitor as a threat. If the website was outsourced, I viewed it as a minimal threat. Why? The outsourced websites were never able to evolve quick enough to user demand.

My websites were constantly evolving because I controlled the coding process. When you outsource, you add a barrier to control. Someone else's code is hard to debug. Also, because "changes" usually incur costs, new website owners are resistance to call up the coder and have changes made. There were some days when a great feature addition would come across my desk and within hours, the features was coded and live - that would never happen with outsourced coders.

Over the years, I had 2 upstart competitors who challenged me well and stuck around; BOTH were coded inhouse. All the others were obvious "we hired a guy from India" and they never lasted simply because they were slow to evolve. I guess they thought that once the APP was coded, it was the end of the app when it's the exact opposite, it is the BEGINNING.

An application is EVER EVOLVING.

That said, don't totally discount doing it yourself. If you have access to a reliable coder who can "on demand" implement changes, that would be the best of both worlds.

 

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[dkt91]

I will have to slightly disagree with you on this.

First, this decision is very personal. If you have the aptitude to pick up a language and quick, I'd recommend it. Why? The ability to code a system from concept to completion is very powerful. Think of it like having the ability to build a house all by yourself; yup, you have the expertise to lay foundation, frame, roof, plumb, electric, HVAC -- except your not building homes, but business systems.

Second, I've mentioned many times that whatever business you get involved in, you will have competitors. Whenever I discovered a new competitor, the first question I wanted to know was this: Is this website coded inhouse or was it outsourced to someone in India? This question was important because it really told me the efficacy of the competitor to compete. If the website was coded inhouse, I viewed the competitor as a threat. If the website was outsourced, I viewed it as a minimal threat. Why? The outsourced websites were never able to evolve quick enough to user demand.

My websites were constantly evolving because I controlled the coding process. When you outsource, you add a barrier to control. Someone else's code is hard to debug. Also, because "changes" usually incur costs, new website owners are resistance to call up the coder and have changes made. There were some days when a great feature addition would come across my desk and within hours, the features was coded and live - that would never happen with outsourced coders.

Over the years, I had 2 upstart competitors who challenged me well and stuck around; BOTH were coded inhouse. All the others were obvious "we hired a guy from India" and they never lasted simply because they were slow to evolve. I guess they thought that once the APP was coded, it was the end of the app when it's the exact opposite, it is the BEGINNING.

An application is EVER EVOLVING.

That said, don't totally discount doing it yourself. If you have access to a reliable coder who can "on demand" implement changes, that would be the best of both worlds.

Good point, MJ! That's another way to see it and it definitly makes sense. And looking at what you've said I do agree with you that building a site inhouse is in some cases the better choice for the reasons you mentioned above.

So all in all it really depends on what someone wants do to. On the project type (social networking, forum, e-commerce or something completely else), on its level of complexity and of course on the estimated need to make changes. Some modern sites cannot be coded by one person anymore - they require teams!

As for williell's case I'd still say that in case he's not planning to do something totally revolutionary outsourcing the whole process is still going to be enough. Neither a forum nor an e-commerce require drastic changes once they're up and running and if so they can usually be made using a CMS of some sort. Usually. Unless he's not planning to do something revolutionary... then coding the site inhouse would be the better choice.

 

[neverfastenough]

So all in all it really depends on what someone wants do to. On the project type (social networking, forum, e-commerce or something completely else), on its level of complexity and of course on the estimated need to make changes. Some modern sites cannot be coded by one person anymore - they require teams!

Sorry, but I'm going to have to completely disagree with that last part. It used to be that create a successful website, you needed $X million of VC money + a large team. Over the last few years, that has become less and less the case. That's why we've seen the introduction of very early-stage seed funds like yCombinator, Techstars, or Highland, that infuse about $20k to get the company started (mostly to cover the founder's living expenses during this time).

 

[dkt91]

I'm not talking about successful websites in general. I'm just talking about 'some modern sites'. No doubt some successful websites can be built with very few money but some other websites just cannot be coded by one single person.
That's all I wanted to say - never meant to offend anyone...

 

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[williell]

The reason I wanted to start learning to code was because I thought I'd have trouble conveying to web designers what I want without having done a little myself. I also thought that It'd be good to know in case I ever had those revolutionary ideas. I made a fast decision after reading a few posts in this thread and elsewhere to not learn to code, but with other peoples insight I'm not too sure anymore. How many months or years would it take to learn how to make a social network like Facebook? How much do you think it would cost to outsource this task (I understand that you'll get different quality work and it will take less or more time depending on how much is paid) ?

 

[neverfastenough]

The reason I wanted to start learning to code was because I thought I'd have trouble conveying to web designers what I want without having done a little myself. I also thought that It'd be good to know in case I ever had those revolutionary ideas. I made a fast decision after reading a few posts in this thread and elsewhere to not learn to code, but with other peoples insight I'm not too sure anymore. How many months or years would it take to learn how to make a social network like Facebook? How much do you think it would cost to outsource this task (I understand that you'll get different quality work and it will take less or more time depending on how much is paid) ?

What *I* would do is utilize an open-source solution (like Dolphin or Elgg) and modify it to quickly have my concept realized, which leads to hopefully a quicker validation of your idea and business.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

What *I* would do is utilize an open-source solution (like Dolphin or Elgg) and modify it to quickly have my concept realized, which leads to hopefully a quicker validation of your idea and business.

Ditto ... a "from scratch" app could take years. You'd be better off using a OS platform and making your hacks/code implementations.

No matter what you do, my basic point is this: Always have control over your app.

 

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[GBGallardo]

I'm in the same boat...looking to learn RoR. Great post above PhxMJ.

 

[TaxGuy]

The reason I wanted to start learning to code was because I thought I'd have trouble conveying to web designers what I want without having done a little myself.

Great point, in fact Andres discussed this at B&P and how a lot of requests are too vague, therefore it's good to have some experience and know exactly WHAT you want from your site to get the most out of your programmer.

I'm in the same boat...looking to learn RoR.

I first heard of RoR when Sprite put up a thread looking for an RoR programmer, knowing that he is a young fastlane success it piqued my interest and I found out that Twitter was one of the first "exhibitions" of this language, is this the code of the future? And if so, what are some other examples of RoR programs?

I tried C++ in high school, but dropped the class after 2 weeks and also took a Matlab course in college(Java based) and had some difficulty grasping it, but still would love to learn some coding myself.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Twitter is coded on RoR, and the new owners of my company revamped my site from ASP.NET to RoR.

 

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[neverfastenough]

Great point, in fact Andres discussed this at B&P and how a lot of requests are too vague, therefore it's good to have some experience and know exactly WHAT you want from your site to get the most out of your programmer.



I first heard of RoR when Sprite put up a thread looking for an RoR programmer, knowing that he is a young fastlane success it piqued my interest and I found out that Twitter was one of the first "exhibitions" of this language, is this the code of the future? And if so, what are some other examples of RoR programs?

I tried C++ in high school, but dropped the class after 2 weeks and also took a Matlab course in college(Java based) and had some difficulty grasping it, but still would love to learn some coding myself.

One of the main benefits of RoR is that you're able to iterate quickly. One of the main negatives is that it's considered harder to scale.

I'll just put it this way; RoR is worth using because if you do get enough traffic that it's not scaling, then you're obviously doing something right, and worst case scenario, the code's rewritten at that point.

 

[neverfastenough]

And one of the better true beginners books I've found for Rails: Head First Labs from O'Reilly Media, Inc. :: Head First Rails

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Just a little clarification on this thread ... I have found myself merging/comparing the two when there are distinct differences ...

From Drupal.org

A lot of people just don't get it. So let us straighten out some confusing matters. So to avoid more FUD.

Don't confuse Ruby with Drupal. Don't think that Ruby on Rails and Drupal can be compared, they cannot. On top of that, they are complementary.

There is Ruby. Ruby is just another programming-language, like Perl, PHP, C or Java. Ruby is one of the newest languages (~14 years old), which -in practice- means it has learned a lot from bad parts of older languages.

There is Ruby on Rails (RoR). This is a system (program) written in the language Ruby. Just like Drupal is written in PHP. But RoR is a framework, not a CMS; With RoR you will have to write your own CMS all by yourself. Drupal already IS a CMS. Ruby on Rails's power (and hype) lies in the fact that writing that complete CMS takes you only a few days, or even just hours. Drupal's power lies in the fact that you don't have to write anything at all.

Conclusion: comparing Ruby with Drupal is like comparing Christmas trees and oranges. Comparing Ruby on Rails and Drupal is like comparing apples and oranges.

 

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