What is Ruby on Rails and why is it so famous?

Question

I have never heard about this language until I came to this site, why is it so famous?

Could you post some example sites developed in this technology? Easy with the downvotes please, am nub I know :(

Thanks

Answer 1

http://www.rubyonrails.org/applications shows a list of applications using ruby on rails.

http://www.google.com/

redbubble is developed using rails:

http://www.redbubble.com/

Answer 2

It's pretty easy to find out about it.

Answer 3

It's very simple:

Rails is Love

:-)

Answer 4

Why is it so famous?:

• Showed you could make a decent web framework out of a less-known language
• The 37signals bloggers are good writers/communicators
• Rolled ORM, MVC, pretty URLs, and easy configuration into an easy-to-use framework
• Stressed simplicity while 'enterprise' platforms emphasized features and complexity
• Associated with 37signals's message of simplicity as a business model
• Ruby has fun, interesting advocates like why the lucky stiff.

Answer 5

Here is a list of other questions on Stackoverflow which might help you:

• whats-the-best-open-source-ruby-on-rails-project-to-learn-from
• learning-ruby-on-rails
• stick-with-php-or-learn-ruby-on-rails
• how-does-ruby-on-rails-work
• is-ruby-on-rails-ready-for-the-enterprise
• why-does-ruby-seem-to-have-fewer-projects-than-other-programming-languages
• why-use-ruby-instead-of-smalltalk
• flex-or-ruby-on-rails-for-a-new-website
• ruby-podcasts
• whats-the-next-thing-on-your-list-to-learn
• what-is-the-best-programming-language-for-web-development-and-why

Answer 6

It's not a language though. The language is Ruby. Rails is a web framework for Ruby, and so is Merb (awesome), Sinatra, Waves, Mack and so on.

Answer 7

Hey Luca, I don't know your background, but if you have worked with a web applications using a database as backend in the last 5 yrs or so, you may have realized that is very laborious to:

• Create the database
• Create the objects or functions to load the db into the webapp
• Render the data
• Update the changes

In many technologies this implies a lot of wasted time in

• Restarting the web server every 5 minutes
• Compiling the whole app several times at day
• Do a lot of hard work to make the simplest data get into the front end.
• Another etcs here.

Well Ruby on Rails is a framework that lets you do all that very very easy.

Ruby is a programming language whose most important features are

• It is interpreted ( you don't have to compile )
• Is dynamically typed ( your object don't have to respond to an interface until they run )
• Has a simple syntax ( no semicolons or curly braces)

And Ruby on Rails or RoR is a framework made upon this language.

Now, for a really interesting demo take a look at this video, it shows how to create a simple blog webapp in 15 mins. ( of course with experts hands )

http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov

There are other frameworks like this out there and even technologies such as Java can do a pretty decent job nowadays ( using spring, hibernate, etc. etc. )

Some people thinks ( me included ) the lack of static types bring more problems than those it solves. ( this is another discussion ) Mostly with new programmers.

I mean, when was the last a new programmer spend a lot of time trying to figure out why he gets so many NullPointerExceptions in only 50 lines of code.

Of course if you're Jon Skeet, you don't even need types, neither static or dynamic, or any sort of syntax for that matter. You can stare at the computer and things get done.

For the rest of us, let us relay on the compiler to prevent most of the problems.

I hope this help you.

Answer 8

One detail, you're asking what is this language. "Ruby on Rails" is not a language. it's a framework. A WEB Framework to be very precise...

RUBY is a language though. And Ruby is the language Ruby on Rails is built in.

If you want to do Google searches for Ruby on Rails you might want to use its abbreviated form; "RoR" or maybe just "Rails"...

The most famous (big) website built with Rails is probably Twitter. Though I guess the RoR advocates don't really like to post that as an example since Twitter has had serious scaling issues which they have been struggling with ever since they had success...

Everything the company 37signals are delivering (BaseCamp etc) are built in Rails...

RoR became really famous for its use of the MVC pattern. In fact the Microsoft MVC (which is used at this website) is created with inspiration from the RoR MVC pattern.

Ruby is a dynamic language (think script language) which means it's often faster to get started and have something running, but also executes slower then e.g. CLR languages (.Net)

Also RoR was made famous due to their heavy emphasize on TESTING of Web Apps which was made possible due to their usage of the MVC pattern which makes the "Controller" parts and the "Model" parts of your app (large portions of your app) very easy to Unit Test...

Also RoR was made famous due to that prototype.js (the "first real" Ajax JavaScript library and the by FAR most popular one - at least before jQuery "vacuum cleaned" the market) was integrated into it and actually made to make "JS feel like Ruby"...

Answer 9

Also Rails is not the only web framework written in ruby. I know of like 20 at least. And I'm not kidding. It's like social networks; everyone and their mother has written a social network - and everyone and their mother has written a ruby framework. ;)

Here are a few I dig: Wuby; Merb; Camping; Sinatra - there are many more.

Answer 10

Ruby on rails is a framework

Ruby on rails, or ROR, is a set of scripts, tools and libraries that helps you to code a web site with language called ruby.

It is known to be easy, efficient and intuitive, and to fit the agile development methodology.

Ruby on rails is famous because...

• This is the first one that have offered such features. Now there are others out there (Django, Symfony, etc). But when ROR first went out, it was a unique killer app.

• Ruby on rails is developed by the 37signals team which used "hype" as an incredibly efficient marketing weapon. And they got a spirit that has been spreading, creating a motivated community around agile concepts and a "make-choices-that-matters" approach.

And I tell you that while I am all about Python :-) BTW, some more explaination about why Ruby's "hype" make the difference :

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/bambi-meets-godzilla

Answer 11

Once upon a time...

Web development was a mess. Java, ASP.NET or LAMP, they all sucked. It took way too long to get a simple web application with a database back-end up and running. The Ruby on Rails guys noticed that in those apps a lot of code was doing the same basic create, read, update and delete of objects over and over again. They decided to build a framework in Ruby where the default CRUD behaviour of objects was built-in, eliminating all that boilerplate code.

Answer 12

It's so famous because it's awesome of course! It's meant to make developer's lives easier and allow you to write great code without pain. It also follow good principles such as DRY and Convention Over Configuration.

As wikipedia says:

Ruby on Rails is intended to emphasize Convention over Configuration (CoC), and the rapid development principle of Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY).

"Convention over Configuration" means a developer only needs to specify unconventional aspects of the application. For example, if there is a class Sale in the model, the corresponding table in the database is called sales by default. It is only if one deviates from this convention, such as calling the table "products sold", that the developer needs to write code regarding these names. Generally, this leads to less code and less repetition.

"Don't repeat yourself" means that information is located in a single, unambiguous place. For example, using the ActiveRecord module of Rails, the developer does not need to specify database column names in class definitions. Instead, Ruby on Rails can retrieve this information from the database based on the class name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails

Answer 13

I have been aware of Ruby On Rails since 2006. Several times I have done some research with the intention of learning it. Each time I have found enthusastic endorsement of it from multiple developers who have found that it live up to it's claims, and makes it easy to develop small-or-large standards compliant web sites. I have found only a few dissenting voices, or people who tried it and abandoned it for something else. This pattern has been consistent from 2006 through 2009, and many successful sites have been built with it. I would say that argument is over - RoR has proven itself. Someone here mentioned RedBubble. There's also Twitter - although they did have some problems with scaling.

Well, I never actually followed it up myself. Just a personal thing. I didn't like the Ruby Language, and discovered F#, and generally prefer a Microsoft stack and IDE. That's purely personal - I'd be quite happy to recommend or use RoR.