The last 20% in Ruby on Rails

Question

I am (quite) an experienced programmer but totally new to Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

RoR looks great to get working quickly, specially the automatic screen generation for CRUD operations.

It really it gets you productive quickly.

The questions is with the last 20% of the work, when I must finish my application. Won't RoR conventions stand in my way? Because not every database table must be available for all users, and not all users can edit all columns and/or all rows, and the views must be adapted to my site's look and feel, etc.

I understand RoR has been used successfully in live sites, but how exactly do you gain enough speed in RoR to escape gravity after the first phase has been burned out.

Answer 1

I don't think scaffolding gets you 80% there. Scaffolding is nice in that it shows you how the pieces of Rails fit together, but I wouldn't build my application off of scaffolding code. Now that you've been impressed by scaffolding it's best that you forget all about it. :)

Where Rails really shines in my mind is database migrations, the awesomeness of how dynamic ActiveRecord is, and the plugin ecosystem.

There's a lot to learn when deciding to go with Rails. You have a new language, new framework, and new plugins - but if you take the time to learn those things you can be very productive with Rails.

Answer 2

Won't RoR conventions stand in my way? Because not every database table must be available for all users, and not all users can edit all columns and/or all rows, and the views must be adapted to my site's look and feel, etc.

This is a bit of a non-sequitur. Rails is a framework that has been lifted from real world applications. Those applications had to deal with all those issues also, as well as others you may not have thought of yet. Generally, the conventions make life easier once you learn them.

Another point is that the conventions are merely conventions. You don't have to follow them. You do not even have to use RoR for everything, though I've yet to find a case where I didn't/couldn't, I do generally try to push as much into the DB or cache layers as possible.

Answer 3

I've been doing ruby on rails for quite sometime. The 80/20 problem is not unique for rails. It applies generally to the entire world. I'm also not aware of any framework that can just do business logic for you.

To answer your specific questions. Conventions will not stand in your way while doing the 20%. Instead, conventions will help you to get through that 20% quicker.

Personally, for user authentication, I use Authlogic. For user authorization, I use Lockdown or Authorization plugin depending on customer need.

I also use inherited_resource in most of my projects to simplify controller code. This is another power of convention.

To increase speed of development, you will not only need to know Rails, but rails gems/plugins that does the right things for you, so you don't have to reinvent the wheels again. Also, knowing Ruby language is a must for quickly develop beyond the 80%.

Ruby Toolbox provides some of the most popular gems and plugins used in typical rails projects targeted at specific domains. You can look through the relevant categories and know what most people use. (And it's probably a good idea to use popular, well maintained gems)

TDD/BDD style development will also help you to speed up in the long run.

Lastly, a warning: If you stray away from rails convention, you will have a painful time in general.

P.S. I used Merb before. My feeling is that conventions helps you in merb, but you won't get too much penalty for not following them in merb. However, my experience with Rails is that if you decide not to follow rails convention while developing rails app, it will come back to bite you in one way or another! So think twice when you really attempted to stray away from rails conventions... (This is from my own experience, and of course subjective, but you can think of it as a warning...)

Answer 4

I don't believe that you'll ever have a serious problem with Rails conventions. Just stick with the conventions and trust the RoR system. The people behind Rails put a lot of effort into these conventions to support 99% of the common usage scenarios.

If you really need to do something outside the conventions it will eventually get complicated quite fast. However, you are not alone. There are a lots of excellent resources on the net to get help (for example the StackOverflow community).

To sum it up:

• Stick with the conventions whenever possible (excellent resource to get started: Rails Guides.
• Don't reinvent the wheel. Look for Rails plugins and Ruby Gems instead (don't forget GitHub).
• Consult the StackOverflow community if you need something out of the ordinary.
• Test all the f***ing time (just for fun).