Ruby on Rails and getting started

Rails
1

Hi,

I want to start using Ruby on Rails on my Windows machine.
I am a beginner with Ruby and Rails. Do however build websites
in HTML5 and CSS3. Where can I learn how to use this Framework ?
What is the best platform to work on with this as a developer, I mean
what
options do I have on my Windows machine ?

Any help and direction would be appreciated…

2

On 17 January 2016 at 14:17, Pierre H.
[email protected] wrote:

Hi,

I want to start using Ruby on Rails on my Windows machine.
I am a beginner with Ruby and Rails. Do however build websites
in HTML5 and CSS3. Where can I learn how to use this Framework ?
What is the best platform to work on with this as a developer, I mean what
options do I have on my Windows machine ?

Start by working right through the tutorial at railstutorial.org
(which is free to use online). You can work through this in the cloud
so you don’t need to worry about installing anything on your machine.

When you have done that then my recommendation is to not even try
developing Rails on Windows, either run a Linux (eg Ubuntu) virtual
machine inside windows or even better dual boot the machine with
Ubuntu and Windows. I gather some have had success with Windows but
the vast majority use Linux or Mac and you will find it much more
difficult to get help on Win. Install ruby and rails using rvm or
rbenv.

Colin

3

Any help and direction would be appreciated…
I’ve never tried this combination before, but I have heard over and over
in the nearly 10 years I have been subscribed to this list that Windows
is really difficult to use for Rails development. Any *nix is a hundred
times easier.

If you start off with the Hartl tutorial (http://railstutorial.org) you
will end up using an online IDE in a browser, so you won’t have to worry
about any of the local setup, and you can use Windows directly. But the
pro advice I have heard here time and again is to install a
virtualization scheme, like VirtualBox, and run Ubuntu there as your dev
environment – or simply dual-boot into Ubuntu or another Linux.

I am not saying it is impossible to develop directly in Windows, one of
my co-workers does quite successfully. But getting it to work at all was
weeks of pain and struggle, and when it goes badly, there is nearly
nobody to help him figure out what is wrong, since his dev environment
is so custom.

Walter

4

Well said colin. For ROR Linux environment is good.

Regards,
Mvsr

5

Hi Pierre,

There are many online Ruby on Rails tutorials and courses that you will
find with a Google search. I found the courses from Pragmatic Studio to
be
quite good, and recommend them. Starting with learning Ruby first is a
good
idea.

Best,
Brent

6

Pierre H. [email protected] writes:

Hi,

Welcome, Pierre,

I want to start using Ruby on Rails on my Windows machine.

The advice I give my students who only have a Windows machine to learn
with is:

a) use a cloud-based development environment, such as cloud9
(https://c9.io), nitrous (https://nitrous.io), koding.com
(https://koding.com).

b) install VirtualBox and Vagrant with a Linux-based virtual
environment.

Of these, (a) is the quickest way to get up to the point of starting to
learn Rails itself.

Time and time again, people trying to use windows as a rails development
environment come up with issues and road blocks. I appreciate that most
people cannot plunk down $1-2000 for a mac to develop on when they
already
have a machine. But as things in the Ruby and Rails world progress, and
this is also true in working with Node and JavaScript on the server,
developers who use Windows, will maintain libraries and frameworks that
work across both Windows and Unix-based platforms become fewer and
fewer.

So do yourself a solid and get a Linux-based platform available for
yourself, through one of the options above.

I am a beginner with Ruby and Rails. Do however build websites
in HTML5 and CSS3. Where can I learn how to use this Framework ?

Colin’s already provided the best source for beginners to learning
Rails, railstutorial.com. (I’m pretty sure he’s got that paragraph on a
hot-key.) Hartl’s recommendation is for Cloud9 as well.

What is the best platform to work on with this as a developer, I mean what
options do I have on my Windows machine ?

The two options above seem like it.

The oft-mentioned RailsInstaller for Windows might be useful at the
beginning stages, but still has serious limitations as one progresses.

Any help and direction would be appreciated…

–
Tamara T.
[email protected]
http://www.tamouse.org