Demonstrating Rails to a PHP developer

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hey,

One of my good friends is a PHP developer and has been for a long time. PHP is also the only language he knows and as such has never used a true OO language. I’d like to convert him to Rails as I know in the long term it’d save him a lot of time, though I need to really wow him to justify dropping his current code base as well as learning a new language (OO theory included) and the Rails framework.

So I’m looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest wow factor.

Cheers Ian.

2

So I'm looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest wow factor.

1. The rails video - kinda does it for you 2. Scaffolding - everyone loves that 3. ActiveRecord - show the 2 lines of code it takes to hook up the object/db mapping. Obviously more impressive if you've used OO before :0) 4. Console 5. Migrations

Typically the things we're really impressed with as newbies will turn out to be the least used when we become more experienced. The coolest thing about rails for me turned out to be ruby :0) However, the nicesities like scaffolding give people the initial turn on.

I'd say the best/most fun thing to do is sit him down and do the blog demo yourself.

Steve

3

So I'm looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest wow factor.

1. The rails video - kinda does it for you 2. Scaffolding - everyone loves that 3. ActiveRecord - show the 2 lines of code it takes to hook up the object/db mapping. Obviously more impressive if you've used OO before :0) 4. Console 5. Migrations

6. Breakpoint 7. Prototype/Scriptaculous integration 8. All the various before/after hooks. 9. Model validation.

4

10. Routing, and the fact that when you add a method to a controller, you automatically get a corresponding valid url to go with it.

11. Builder templates

12. Migrations. Again. And again.