It now marks one year since I began my adventures in Ruby on Rails, and what a year it has been!
I began looking into rails while walking my newly born, colicky daughter in a front pack as a way to keep her comfortable and mitigate her constant crying. My learning came mostly from Lynda classes on RoR. I often walked for hours at a time, since that was the only activity my daughter seemed comfortable doing. In some ways, it was miserable, in others, extremely rewarding.
Little did I realize that my daughter’s colic would lead me to a new passion, Ruby on Rails. I loved the simplicity of the framework. I loved that it was open source. I loved that there were so many gems that allowed developers to stay DRY (don’t repeat yourself). Rather than having to reinvent tons of web based algorithms and tools, Rails offered me the opportunity to utilize so much prebuilt functionality that applications became like Lego sets, with all the pieces and parts I needed to create anything I wanted.
And as an Indie Author, my desire was to create a super simple indie author book search engine.
I’m pleased to report that my first Ruby on Rails application went live a few days ago, UNIVERSEindie.com. And it’s exactly what I wanted it to be – a simple search engine dedicated to the works of indie authors.
Although I’m sure many of the readers here are not interested so much in UNIVERSEindie.com as a personal tool, as most web developers are often more interested in writing code than reading fiction or memoirs, I wanted to post this article to demonstrate how even an EXTREMELY busy, new dad, could learn Ruby on Rails well enough in a year to complete a fully functional, and what I hope will become, a successful website.
I’ve also been privileged enough to land a full time Ruby on Rails job at Within3, a Cleveland based health industry collaboration platform, back in March, which has been a fantastic opportunity and a job that I very much enjoy!
So moral of the story, Ruby on Rails, after one year, offered me exciting employment options, and enabled me to write my first, fully functional personal app. Am I biased toward the framework? I’ll let you decide 🙂
The Ruby Railroad 