I spent last weekend learning Ruby on Rails (http://www.rubyonrails.com) and now I can’t help but wonder why the hell it took me so long. My work (http://www.bradv.com) was kind enough to fetch me a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails (http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html) and I’ve had a hard time focusing on anything else.
I’ve already started porting some of my apps (http://glide.playgroundblues.com) to Rails and its surprisingly elegant and fun. After figuring out associations between database tables I feel well on my way. There is still a lot to get used to. Mainly Ruby’s syntax. It’s very different than any language I’ve used. I’m really diggin' the “everything is an object” mentality.
Some tips if your interested… Install FastCGI (http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/FastCGI%20on%20OS%20X). It will dramatically increase the responsiveness of Ruby. Dreamhost has this option in their panel. Be on the lookout for some MySQL issues (http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowtoInstallOnOSXTiger) if your using Tiger. Also make sure to point your VirtualHost entry to the /public folder in your rails app. You could also do this with a .htaccess file in the root.
Be on the look out for a Rubified Playground Blues in the near future :)