29 March 2015
What the Heck is Rails?
So I've been doing this course for quite some time, and I have an admission to make: up until today I still had no idea what Rails was. I know Ruby. I’ve practiced Ruby. I've done challenges with Ruby. I've built things with Ruby. But to this point my experience with Rails is nonexistent. Often I'll hear the term "Ruby on Rails." And it always made me a bit nervous not knowing what that really meant. But alas! Now I know. And soon you will too.
So what is Rails? Well, I've still got a lot to learn but my understanding is Rails is an open source web framework that provides you with a structure you can use to combine Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS in order to create dynamic web applications. Rails has a basic structure and follows certain conventions that are followed by everyone in the "Rails Community," which makes it easy to get support and share ideas. Specifically, two important conventions followed in Rails are: "Don't Repeat Yourself" (avoid repetitive code) and “Convention over Configuration” (which basically refers to default Rails features that allow you to avoid needing to write tons of code to configure certain settings). Rails is also characterized by downloadable extensions, called gems, which are released regularly and add new features to Ruby in order to expand what you are able to do on Rails.
So while Ruby is the language you will be writing, Rails is the notebook that holds everything and turns the ideas in your head and the code you write into something tangible.
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