Ruby, Ruby On Rails, Web 2.0, all these buzz words, I had to look into it and I must say it’s worth the look. I’m not a real expert when it comes to JSP, JSF, Struts, Hibernate and so on, all these frameworks built to help in implementing server side solution but I hope for all java server side developers around there is something like RoR around. Sure I’ve not seen yet all the power of J2EE in RoR but to rapidly implement a web app it looks like a really good choice.

I’ve read about some performance issues with Ruby but I’m sure the more it gets used in enterprise app the faster it will become - plus is the performance the real problem? Maybe we are not looking into the same type of app J2EE is made for, I don’t know but anyway.

The point is playing with Ruby, more precisely Ruby On Rails, has been a real pleasure. Well to be honest the first days I was quite confused, mainly because I do not like the output of their rdoc (javadoc like) which is not as good as javadoc yet, it made it more difficult to find what I was looking for. But then I found lot of websites with good tips and code snippets, almost everything which I needed was already there somewhere!

The development process of Rails app is also interesting, a Rails app as a clear separation between model/view/controller, all Rails apps look pretty much the same when it comes to how you organize your files which is good when you look at other Rails apps for inspiration. My development environment is radrails, it’s built on top of Eclipse and looks promising.

For my first Rails app I wanted something fun, a website I would go to. So I went at creating a website about tvshows and music in tvshows, it’s here heardontv.com, it’s new, it”s a work in progress, me playing with Rails If you are in tvshows and like music, check it out. And if you are looking for Rails hosting, I recommend hostingrails, their free hosting is good to experiment with Rails (they currently have an offer with Dreamhost, you get a domain name for free too…)

That’s all for now, I may add other Ruby posts later… In the meantime, keep track of what you heard on tv and why not contribute!