I took for a spin ROR (Ruby on Rails) tonight since I had some free time, I started installing it along with a XAMPP installation that I already have running. At first they didn’t want to talk to each other but in the end they both end up working just fine. I would like to write yet just another tutorial about how to have XAMPP and ROR working together but if everything runs smooth I might ditch XAMPP and have ROR by itself.

So I started to play around with installing the framework around 10:00 PM and by 1:30 AM (which is right now) I was able to write my first small application with ROR following Ruby Forge tutorial, to be honest if you are working on a PC with XP I hit some small walls but it wasn’t too difficult to figure it out. But it would be really nice if the tutorial could be adjusted for XP users specially while using the command line and the installer’s interface. Also there is a very small variation from using the SQL editor compared to HeidiSQL but now that I have used HeidiSQL I will continue using it, it seemed to be a little faster than having to use phpMyAdmin, but that is another subject.

So after playing around with ROR for about 1 hour and a half I could see how easy it is to create applications, of course tutorials take you only so far and now it is only left to your imagination to see what you can do with the framework but I am really impressed of how easy it is to create files, connect to databases, update databases and adjust your templates to your liking.

The only downside to this is that you either drop the cash to test in a “live” environment (live server) or you can just live with the fate that people will believe you can work with ROR without actually having a site to show them what you can do.  But in the end if you try it out and you love it and you think that this could be something you can use in the future for your development it is worth to use that extra money as an investment.