So two people, which in the world of the readers of this blog, corresponds to about the size of the Northern Hemisphere, have read and been confused about this rails thing. They and I know that the internet is out there to help, but it’s probably expecting a lot for people to leave the comfort of their source for news on everything. It’s time to set the record straight and clarify what exactly it is that I keep going on and on about.
Rails, short for Ruby on Rails, is, as it turns out, a web development framework. It was created in 2004 or thereabouts by a person who talks funny. Rails was built using a programming language called (surprise) Ruby, which has incidentally been around for much longer (publicly released in 1995).
The great thing about web development is that you can write programs that are available on any reasonable computer on the planet. One unfortunate characteristic of software development in general - and web development in particular - is that easy things often turn out to be pretty damn hard. Web development frameworks try to help us avoid this unfortunate state of affairs. The great thing about rails is that it actually makes web development a pretty good time for developers. Rails attempts, with a fair degree of success in my mind, to make the easy things easy and the hard things attainable. Ruby (that’s the language, remember) is also not to be neglected any time “programming” and “fun” happen to be used in the same breath, since rails obviously wouldn’t have been possible without it.
And now that our ducks are in a row, go enjoy rails