Posted by Willem Bogaerts on 08/29/07 12:00

> Situation:
> A client of a friend of mine asked me to take over a project done in
> Ruby. (The original programmer appearantly behaved like an @ss and his
> client wants to get rid of him.)
> The project is done in Ruby on Rails.
>
>
> I have 0 experience with Ruby, but consider myself a reasonably seasoned
> programmer (php/java/vb/basic perl/javascript).

I have zero experience in Ruby on Rails as well, but I have had a few
introductions. Ruby is an object oriented language, so if you use object
orientation in your other languages, this will be familiar. Just the
mixins are different. But not rocket-science-difficult as far as I know.

If you have experience with unit testing, Ruby on Rails will be an
enlightenment. If you don't like unit tests, prepare for a hard time.
The Ruby on Rails system is designed to guide you to "good programming".
You may have to learn to love it...

> Does anybody know how much time I should expect to spend to get 'on
> rail' with Ruby (Ruby on Rails)?
> The language claims to be easy and intuitive and even fun. :P
> (But do you know of a language that says of itself to be hard,
> counterintuitive and absolutely NO fun?)

Apart from BrainF*ck (see http://bluesorcerer.net/esoteric/bf.html) and
intercal (see http://catb.org/~esr/intercal/), I would not know of any...

> How does Ruby compare to PHP?

As Apple to PEAR probably ;) No. Just kidding. Ruby is quite legible and
"purely" object oriented. You should be able to read it.

> What do you think of Ruby and Ruby on Rails?

If I would need it for my job, I would not object to learning it. I have
never had the need though. But enough of my friends use it.

Good luck,
--
Willem Bogaerts

Application smith
Kratz B.V.
http://www.kratz.nl/

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