I'm new to Rails (and Ruby), and come from a heavy Microsoft background. I'm having very little issue with the syntactical side of things, and much more with the culture shock of standard operating procedures for "real" sites. By real, I mean sites that do more than change the views for CRUDing data.
For instance, I would normally have the ability to write a very simple "starter" to an idea in C# and publish, see the results, modify, wash, rinse, repeat. I understand that Rails deployment is more cumbersome, but is there a server-based, "work-as-you-go"-type system?
Whenever I build a new Rails application in Aptana, I automagically get a "development", "test", and "production" wiring. Is there a way that I can then deploy to a remote machine (such as a virtual through HostGator, or something), work on the development local, test, then deploy production to the virtual?
I'm not sure I'm even making sense here, but it just seems that while I can find articles galore about how to use scaffolding, I can't seem to find anything about deploying/publishing a "real" site anywhere.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize if reading this über-noobness has otherwise wasted your time.
Thanks much in advance.