feedback for programming newbies looking to build a social networking site?

Question

my partner and i are launching a social learning platform - the requirements have been mapped out and are quite basic/intuitive.

we are familiar with html/css, and have some very basic understanding of php, but we would love some feedback on whether we should tackle this ourselves or not. we've built websites, but in the past relied mostly on pre-fab code, i.e. wordpress, ning, etc.

we've been looking specifically at ruby for developing the network, but i haven't delved into it fully yet.

we're looking for some guidance and feedback - e.g. thoughts on ruby on rails? what's the learning curve? are we getting in over our heads?

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I don't have much experience in bringing rails applications into production, but I've toyed around with rails and asp.net for the past year and a half or so, and here's my take on the 'learning curve:'

This wording is largely stolen from the book, 'The Rails Way', which I've been reading for the last couple nights, but... Rails seems very 'opinionated.' The more facets of the framework that you learn about, the easier your life will be. In line with Ruby, Rails is quite flexible... you CAN just go for it and with the help of Activerecord, scaffolding and the routing system you'll have some reasonable functionality with almost no effort whatsoever. However, the correlation between using Rails idioms/design patterns and your productivity is very close. With a good book in hand (I strongly suggest 'The Rails Way' for long-term Rails knowledge. Perhaps something smaller and cheaper will suffice if you just want to make THIS application and make it fast.) and a newly developed habit of READING (The Ruby and Rails community have a vibrant selection of weblogs and articles ranging from best practices to simple how-to's.) you'll have no problems. In a sentence:

Learning to do things the 'Rails way' will take some time, but Rails is designed to get your application up and running with as little fuss as possible.

Answer 2

This really depends on what exactly 'social learning platform' means. Quite possibly this will be over your head.

On the other hand Rails are very intuitive and have a quick learning curve - I'd expect to be fairly proficient in a month or two.

An excellent resource for learning the basics of Rails are Ryan Bate's Railscats.

Answer 3

It is my opinion that if you want to successful run an Internet based startup, at some point, preferably very soon, you are going to need to get your hands dirty and code. Read this block post entitled "The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?" There are benefits to each technology, but at some point you are going to have to evaluate which one you want to use and dig right in and run with it.

Answer 4

Ruby is solid language and seems to be the trendy web dev language. Its not a extremely difficult language to learn. Check out a couple books:

• Agile Web Development with Rails

• The Rails Way

If you have problems come on here and ask. Otherwise give your project a go for a couple weeks/months, you'll know if your over your head, then seek additional serious help if needed.

Answer 5

thanks everyone!! great advice, and much appreciated :)

i will look into the resources and definitely jump in and get my hands dirty. you're right, we should just go ahead and start getting into the coding, even if we end up handing over that aspect later on, it will be an important first step in getting our own platform up and running.

just in case you want to check out what we have launched so far on ning: www.yibboo.com

thanks again! kim

Answer 6

Looks like you have already found something that helps in your way: building on Ning platform actually makes sense in many ways since:

1. You can start with something that already works, and get there in 2 minutes or so
2. Even though things are pre-fab, you can not only tweak things, but actually code and re-code, as long as you are comfortable with PHP.

So building it all from scratch yourself may make sense if your goal is to learn how to build such things. But if the network itself matters more, total DIY is probably not the best way to get there. You end up working much more on plumbing, nuts and bolts; and if you are lucky, with scaling issues.