Technically these aren’t my very first steps, because I installed InstantRails on my Windows box the other day and played around a little bit. But development on Windows is not fun, and the DOS prompt just doesn’t cut it as a shell. (I couldn’t get RadRails to work, either.)
So today, after getting this PowerMac G4, I read through Apple’s great tutorial, Using Ruby on Rails for Web Development on Mac OS X. The first thing was to follow along with Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger. No problems there. Downloaded TextMate and used it for the rest of the Apple tutorial, and oh my gosh it was good. Like, really good. Developing on a Mac is soooo much more enjoyable than on a Windows box. There’s no comparison. Coding on Windows feels like slogging through quicksand. Give me OS X and let me surf.
So, next steps? I’m still reading through the PickAxe book, which is great for learning Ruby. I highly recommend it. Now that I have a working RoR installation, I can make more sense of the tutorials out there. I’ve been reading Amy Hoy’s articles on slash7.com, all of which are excellent and well worth your time.
I’ll admit that it feels a little overwhelming, especially with the wealth of stuff to master (not just Ruby and the Rails framework, but Ajax as well), but everything I’ve seen has convinced me that this is worth any struggle and learning curve. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but the project I’ll be coding in RoR is Beyond, a genealogy meets Web2.0 app, basically. You can follow along with its development there.
This post is long enough. I want to get back to reading the PickAxe book. :)
[tags]Ruby on Rails, TextMate, Apple, Mac, OS X[/tags]
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