ruby on rails

[alienhospital]

I know there's some difficulty around Rails right now--like a lot--and I don't condone that, it's just the most inuitive web framework to me.

I started out in my web journey creating new features for the code behind ao3, which I have deployed as my own site on one of my servers. (Actually 2.) AO3 is built with Ruby on Rails, and through developing for OTW-Archive, I found a real passion for developing with Rails? I just made SystemSpace, a Myspace-inspired Rails app for my DID system that lets us each have our own profile AND multiple blogs to post on. Tbh I've heard it's... not best suited for smaller scale applications? But it really is the framework I understand the best.

I was wondering if anyone else has built with Rails, and if so if you'd be willing to show off your projects!

[Dan Q]

I first started writing Ruby in the early 2000s and instantly fell in love with it. It's still my go-to language, my golden hammer, for all kinds of different projects. At the time, all my friends encouraged me to learn Python, but I never really got on well with Python. The forced indentation, the "backwards" object model, etc., just didn't fit well into my brain, so I stuck with my less-popular language.

And then Rails came out and it rapidly became Ruby's killer app. Now people were interested in it! I picked up Rails in the mid-2000s and my first major project with it was a reimplementation of my 2002 volunteer management system (formerly in PHP), Three Rings (tl;dr: Three Rings is volunteer management software, by volunteers, for volunteers: we're the oldest system of our type in the world and we're used by everything from big international charities and household names all the way down to tiny grassroots volunteer groups; it's probably the most important thing I've ever given to the world).

Soo... yeah, that's a project worth singing about: a 23-year-old charity system, implemented in Rails since ~2006, that I contribute to most weeks.

Oh, and nowadays my day job has me building atop Rails a lot too.

But for many tasks, Rails is too heavyweight and I'd rather use something simpler, so if you're interested in Ruby-not-on-Rails, you might consider looking at some other options too! I've used Sinatra for a lot of things and enjoy it, or Padrino for when I absolutely need ActiveRecord (although you can just add that alone to Sinatra). For static sites, I love Middleman (I don't see why its sister Jekyll gets so much love; Middleman's like what Jekyll could have been!).

And even without a framework, Ruby's a delight: there's like 18 Ruby-based projects in my public GitHub, and there's gotta be many many more I've touched at some point along the way.

[alienhospital]

And then Rails came out and it rapidly became Ruby's killer app. Now people were interested in it! I picked up Rails in the mid-2000s and my first major project with it was a reimplementation of my 2002 volunteer management system (formerly in PHP), Three Rings (tl;dr: Three Rings is volunteer management software, by volunteers, for volunteers: we're the oldest system of our type in the world and we're used by everything from big international charities and household names all the way down to tiny grassroots volunteer groups; it's probably the most important thing I've ever given to the world).

Soo... yeah, that's a project worth singing about: a 23-year-old charity system, implemented in Rails since ~2006, that I contribute to most weeks.

Oh wow, that is absolutely amazing. What an INCREDIBLE accomplishment!!

"Oh, and nowadays my day job has me building atop Rails a lot too.

But for many tasks, Rails is too heavyweight and I'd rather use something simpler, so if you're interested in Ruby-not-on-Rails, you might consider looking at some other options too! I've used Sinatra for a lot of things and enjoy it, or Padrino for when I absolutely need ActiveRecord (although you can just add that alone to Sinatra). For static sites, I love Middleman (I don't see why its sister Jekyll gets so much love; Middleman's like what Jekyll could have been!).

And even without a framework, Ruby's a delight: there's like 18 Ruby-based projects in my public GitHub, and there's gotta be many many more I've touched at some point along the way."

Yeah, lol, this is exactly what pretty much every single one of my friends said who work in tech professionally. It's really heavy, buuuut it's also my favorite thing to work with :P I really want to try out Sinatra, this was also recommended to me by a friend who works in tech. Ruby is great and I want to try so much more!
 

[alienhospital]

 Come to think about it, I think one of the reasons I like working in ROR is how many resources there are for learning it. I followed the "build a basic blog" guide for a few versions ago and was able to build SystemSpace, which is a bit more complex, from there, and it really helped me. I was able to add status updates to the Archive of Our Own (biggest fan fiction site in the world) code (on my own site running it) as well as restore a feature it had in its early days with updated stuff. Like, I'm pretty proud of that and I never would've been able to do it without that tutorial.

So if anyone has any resources for other Ruby things not on Rails---maybe Sinatra specifically?--- and learning them, I'd love love love it.