[Ruby] Greetings from Alaska

[Joe Van Dyk]

On 9/28/06, Neil Moomey <neil at motznik.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone.  I signed up for this list because I'm learning Ruby on Rails
> and this is closest Ruby group I could find to my home in Anchorage, AK.
> I've been programming mostly web stuff full time for about seven years now.
> My coworker and I just convinced our boss to let us give Ruby on Rails a
> try.  We are currently using ASP.NET with C#.  I also have experience with
> PHP, Java and a tad Python.  I work for a small Data warehousing company.
> Most of my work is db related.  (MySQL and SQL Server) I was a member of the
> SEAJUG list for years and was very impressed with the caliber of programmers
> in the Seattle area.  I hope you don't mind if I join in on your
> discussions.
>
> My first question is what books and resources would you recommend?  I would
> like a quick review of the basics without having to learn programming from
> scratch.  I also enjoy learning by example so lots of code is good.

http://rubyonrails.org/docs has a list of books.  "Agile Web
Development With Rails" is a great book.  Get the PDF for the 2nd
edition and wait for that edition to come out (should be out sometime
soon).

> I'm finding Ruby very easy to pick up but Rails is a bit different than
> ASP.NET.  In ASP.NET the elements on a web page are treated as objects.
> HTML Tables, labels, text boxes etc.  I can set visible to false, change
> their properties etc which I found useful.  How is this done in Rails?

Err, to hide a text box, use CSS to set display: none, or you can use
Javascript to remove it.  RJS may be helpful there.

> What IDE are most people using?

If you're on a mac, a lot of people like TextMate.  I use vim with Ubuntu Linux.

If you have further Rails questions,
http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk would probably be a
good bet.