24 Jun, 2011, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 81st comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Those statistics aren't even close to correct. It may seem like there's more Ruby demand because there aren't as many Ruby developers.


I'm wondering if that makes Rails better to focus on to get into the field. I've seen lot's of work here in Dallas
for LAMP developers, but just as much (if not more so) for Ruby on Rails. The reason I wanted to focus on learning PHP isn't
because it's better or worse, but without a framework, I am forced to learn web basics.

I got uncomfortable not knowing exactly what was going on under the hood. An example might be:

link_to 'Foo', path_to_foo, :confirm => 'Are you sure?'


Not sure off hand if the above is syntacticly precise, however I know in HTML it might look like:

<a href='foo.html' onclick="return confirm('Are you sure?');">Foo</a>


Don't get me wrong, I agree that Rails should use helpers instead of writing raw HTML / Javascript.
I know that RoR is wanting to be Javascript agnostic eventually as well. This is what scares me about focusing
100% or RoR. If I don't commit time to learning the basics first, how can I be useful? I think that there will be
many RoR folks out there that have to hit the books once they get handed a project that doesn't provide all the
syntactic sugar. (not that there's anything wrong with it) :lol:
24 Jun, 2011, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 82nd comment:
Votes: 0
Not to mention SQL.

I think the Model system is great, especially when using 'rails console'. Suffice it to say, I think
a seasoned web pro would do fine picking it up having the core concepts under his/her belt. But as
a new comer, I'm just not sure.
24 Jun, 2011, Runter wrote in the 83rd comment:
Votes: 0
Well, you don't have to use PHP to get that experience.

http://www.sinatrarb.com/

Which, btw, is what I use for small projects.

If you really are into self-inflicted-pain you can go a step lower and make a rack-app.

http://rack.rubyforge.org/

Which let's you basically have only the bare minimal basics of a web server while letting you hook into any server that normally rails or any other framework(which also uses rack) would have access to. Like heroku.

re sql

The reason that a ORM is so useful is because it can be database agnostic, and you should be too. When I make an app locally I might use sqlite (because I can, it's just for testing). But then when I push that same app to heroku it's going to use (quite automagically) postgres. Or maybe it's going to use a nosql solution. The point is there's adapters for that and knowing the underlying workings of a database is fine, but in practice it's becoming less and less important unless you're job is a database technician. And fwiw, these ORMs usually let you have raw access to the store. Or they let you write database-specific-language. The more of that you actually do the worse it is when you need to use a different adapter.
24 Jun, 2011, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 84th comment:
Votes: 0
re edit

That makes sense. I've spent a lot of time programming for fun, learning complicated things for fun.
But now, I really want to put that time to practical use and learn for work. Maybe I'm just paranoid that
if I have fun (because I love Ruby) that it won't work out? Meh, I'm weird :stare:
24 Jun, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 85th comment:
Votes: 0
I "had fun" for my whole childhood learning to program, ended up going to college for it, and then being employed professionally as a developer… so IMHO, at least, I don't think there's anything dangerous with having fun while you learn something. :smile:

plamzi said:
I've heard say that Ruby is hot in California, with lots of demand for people who can write it fast and well. Now, you can list all those other languages on your resume and hope that someone else who doesn't believe in fashions picks you out from the crowd as someone who can learn Ruby fast.

I guess so. In my experience, at least at the companies I've worked at and applied to, people look for smarts first, learnable skills second. It's a lot easier to take a good dev and teach them Ruby in a few weeks than it is to take a Ruby guy who isn't terribly good and teach him smarts.

plamzi said:
If I were on the web developer job market, applying for positions like "Ruby Developer," I would do the latter.

Well duh :tongue: If you're applying to a position that has a very specific skill set required, it seems kind of odd to apply without having that skill set. Completely agreed…

What I meant is that many positions I've seen call for "software developer" rather than "<xyz language> software developer".
Maybe it just depends on where you apply… dunno.
80.0/85