What exactly is Ruby on Rails?

It’s easy to forget that Rails only first surfaced in the summer of 2005, just two years ago, and even people in the industry are still discovering it.

When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a web developer, on most occasions, that will satisfy their curiosity. It’s surprising how many people have been exposed to creating a website in some shape or form, even if it is just dragging and dropping elements in Dreamweaver.

However, there are plenty of people who are aware of web technologies, work in IT, even work as web developers and when they ask me if I develop in PHP, ASP, Java etc. and I reply with Ruby on Rails they say… “ruby on what”?

Ruby on Rails is an open source framework for creating database driven web applications; it enables agile development by favoring convention over configuration.

Essentially you can get applications up and running quickly and easily by avoiding all the laborious tasks developers usually get bogged down with. Ruby on Rails (aka Rails) introduces a common project directory structure and simple, common naming conventions. It’s philosophy is to optimise for programmer happiness and is written in Ruby, the fastest growing programming language of 2006.

Rails grew out of the development process of a project-management tool called Basecamp written by David Heinemeier Hansson, a tool we actually now use day in day out.

We first picked up on Rails at Kyan after viewing the, now infamous, create a weblog in 15 minutes screencast. We then went to the Future of Web Apps conference in London in early 2006 where David Heinemeier Hansson was speaking and once we’d heard what he had to say there was no going back.

Myself and Nick began learning Rails at every opportunity and the first Rails driven website released soon after by us at Kyan was Howell Jones rhw Solicitors.

Rails really is a joy to work with, it allows the development team to deliver projects on shorter deadlines without compromising the quality of the work. While our clients are often not concerned with which development tools we use, they certainly enjoy the benefits that Ruby on Rails brings to the table.