From the category archives:

Ruby on Rails

100 days of learning Ruby on Rails and Radiant CMS

by Jasper Kooij on September 23, 2008 · 1 comment

in Radiant, Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is just so appealing, there just is no way around it!

Thanks to some enlightening conversations with a serious Ruby on Rails Themezoom developer called Kelley, I’ve been drawn into DRY (don’t repeat yourself) and Ruby on Rails. The 37 signals book called getting real was an eye opener for me.

I’ve been working on a number of small to large websites and the development time from great design to implementation was far longer than could have been and was more a detour over a dirt road than cruising down the development highway. Coming to the conclusion that something is not quite the way it could be, is an easy one, but how?

By my very nature I’m curious about what and how to do better than what I am doing right now. Granted it’s not one of my strong sides. I’m hopelessly addicted to marketing courses, seo courses, self improvement courses, copywriting courses, newsletters, screencasts and more( sound familiar? ) which led me to a CMS built on Ruby on Rails a couple of months ago with which I have been experimenting much to my pleasure. It’s lightweight, fast and very direct in it’s ability to implement a website and website structure. Natural silo modeling comes pretty much built-in.

Getting it up and running was a little more of a hassle on a shared hosting account but since I now have an account at railsplayground, the sky is the limit.

Finding out how things are working and how to make more of Radiant is where I’m landing in unknown territory. I really don’t know much about Ruby on Rails, the underlying structure, Rest, Git, Active Record and Kelley’s favorite RDBMS: Postgresql(which is one of the options in databases for Rails).

I have done Cobol many moons ago which was less than exciting than for example pascal was and some PHP which never got my ‘mojo’ going. Playing with Rails is having fun again in programming. I once firmly stated that “I am not a programmer!”. Sue if you ever read this, I was wrong!

A major attraction in my point of view is that Rails is not build on an island or as an island and is ready to interface from the ground up, just need to figure out how! And building a static website would merely the beginning.

So that’s why I’m starting my journey of 100 days of learning Ruby on Rails and Radiant CMS. January 1 is usually the day of making resolutions that never come true so I better be done before that.

Here are my tools:

  • Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition by Sam Ruby and Dave Thomas
  • Netbeans
  • Bitnami Rubystack
  • The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez
  • website running Radiant CMS 0.6.9 - www.jasperkooij.com. I’ve installed Radiant last night and worked on the homepage design in the last couple of hours. After all this is day 1.

What I need:

  • Macbook Pro - seriously. If you have one and don’t need it, call me!!
  • more practically: a fellow student or a rails developer that I can ask questions once in a while. If you feel what I feel and want to do what I’m doing, join me!

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Mac Vs. PC - Age old question but more interesting now than ever

by Jasper Kooij on August 29, 2008 · 3 comments

in Ruby on Rails

My first computer (don’t laugh) was a msx computer built by Philips. From there I upgraded to my first PC: A Tandon 8088 with 20 MB hardrive and a floppy drive. That thing was heavy and I’ve spent many hours on it looking at the green 14″ screen.

Since then I’ve been very true to the PC brand and always bravely “battled” my design guys with their Mac’s. Lately I have been playing with a very nice dell laptop, 17″ screen etc with Ms Vista. I’ve never used vista before and I found it to be disappointing.

I’m no stranger to different operating systems: I’ve used OS/2 Warp, Windows XP and predecessors, Ubuntu, BSD, ran PClinuxOs off my laptop and Mandrake (now Mandriva) to name a few.

Not only was Vista was cumbersome and more indirect in it’s use than XP; using it and installing software always gives me some sort of security warning. It was driving me crazy. On top of that the Dell laptop and the adapter actually weighs more than my old Tandon and screen did. I really thought that the days of “luggables” were gone!

So I wander over the graphics department and sure enough there stands a 24″ Imac with wireless mouse and keyboard. It’s just a marvel of simplicity. All the software seems to be pretty zippy including Illustrator which when I start it on my PC , I usually can go get some coffee before it’s ready to function.

This here image seems to illustrate precisely my setup

Pc Vs Mac

Pc Vs Mac

So what’s the conclusion? I have no conclusion other than that my next computer probably will be an Imac or a Macbook Pro. Does Mac has it’s own problems? I’m probably willing to find out!!

Flame war on!!

Ps Maybe it’s because I am learning way too many new things regarding Ruby on Rails where everyone seems to be using a Mac. I WANT ONE NOW!!!

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