How to make a social network website

Hi, I'm a new programmer and I want to make a social network like facebook or orkut.

I only know the basics of C and a bit of Objective-C (OOP). I know nothing about web programming.

My question is what should I use, ruby on rails or python with django? I know it is a ruby on rails group, so I know I have to expect the good points on rails, but since I don't know any of the 2 languages, and neither anything on web programming, I'd like your opinion why rails is better.

Also where should I start learning how to make my social network with ruby on rails? Any particular book, opencoursewares, or tutorials I could use?

I downloaded a book, "RailsSpace - Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails", but don't know if it is good, and also it requires some knowledge of HTML, which I don't have.

Thank you for your time, Rodrigo

Hi, I’m a new programmer and I want to make a social network like

facebook or orkut.

Welcome to being a new programmer and I can see you have already set a lofty goal for yourself. It’s good to have ambition. :slight_smile:

I only know the basics of C and a bit of Objective-C (OOP). I know

nothing about web programming.

Understanding OOP is going to be key when learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

My question is what should I use, ruby on rails or python with django?

I know it is a ruby on rails group, so I know I have to expect the

good points on rails, but since I don’t know any of the 2 languages,

and neither anything on web programming, I’d like your opinion why

rails is better.

Ruby and Ruby on Rails. It’s more OOP with a very active and enthusiastic user base. In my opinion it is definitely more popular. This is based on my very unscientific study of what jobs recruiters call me about.

Here is a great link where the author compares the two very well. http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Python_vs_Ruby

Also where should I start learning how to make my social network with

ruby on rails?

Any particular book, opencoursewares, or tutorials I could use?

I downloaded a book, "RailsSpace - Building a Social Networking

Website with Ruby on Rails", but don’t know if it is good, and also it

requires some knowledge of HTML, which I don’t have.

That book will give you a good understanding of how to build a social network with RoR. However, it will not get you the basics of web programming or give you a deeper dive into Ruby that you would get somewhere else. You do have to have some knowledge of HTML no matter what web programming you do. HTML is the basic markup language of the web and is ultimately the final output of any web program. You should definitely take the time to go through a tutorial, read a book, or take a class that will give you the understanding of HTML.

My suggestion is that you learn about web programming in the following order:

  1. HTML (with some CSS and Javascript)
  2. Ruby
  3. Ruby on Rails

You can replace 2 with any language you want to learn (Python, Java, etc.) and 3 with that language’s corresponding framework but you can never replace 1.

Good luck in your learning and welcome again to programming!

B.

Thank you.

I had more answers at the Django group, but your answer was far more superior than Djangos. When I asked there about python vs ruby they just said it was a stupid question…

One more question, do you know any tutorial, book or class (video classes like opencourseware) that I can use to learn HTML?

One thing I did like about ruby on rails is that at first I found a book specifically for what I wanted, didn’t have to keep looking for one part at each place to get the pieces together. Do you know if I can do that with HTML? I mean, just one book or one tutorial.

Thank you again,

Rodrigo

Also, just out of curiosity, is ruby on rails just for web applications or I can build on desktop or mobile or anything else?

The Rails part of Ruby on Rails is a web framework so as such is really only for web development.

Ruby however can do almost anything but you would have to pick a new framework for desktop applications (such as GTK or wx or Fox or ...) and again for mobile development. Actually I don't know of a mobile framework for Ruby but I'm sure one exists (or is at least in alpha)

I have a mac, and I saw something about MacRuby, is it good? is it the same as any other way of programming for web with ruby on rails?

To start with HTML and CSS you’ll find excellent tutorials here:

teaching how to make clean and compliant programming or also here

to Rails with indications on where to find Ruby tutorials here:

In this link, one of the tutorials teach you how to make a ‘Twitter’ clone.

I think you’ll be busy at least in the next six months and I wish you All The Best.

I have a mac, and I saw something about MacRuby, is it good? is it the same as any other way of programming for web with ruby on rails?

Macruby is an implementation of ruby (like jruby, rubinius etc). Last I heard it was still pretty experimental

Frederick Cheung wrote in post #994350:

I have a mac, and I saw something about MacRuby, is it good? is it the same as

any other way of programming for web with ruby on rails?

Macruby is an implementation of ruby (like jruby, rubinius etc). Last I heard it was still pretty experimental

MacRuby is still "experimental," in the sense it is still in beta. But, they are nearing a 1.0 release. I have experimented with an earlier version of MacRuby. It seemed pretty stable, and capable of producing production ready applications even back then. They've made a ton of progress since that time.

http://www.macruby.org/blog/2011/03/23/macruby010.html

MacRuby is also quite a bit more that just another Ruby implementation. MacRuby is built on top of Objective-C, which means that all Ruby objects are actually Objective-C objects. This means that MacRuby has native access to all the Mac OS X frameworks that are available to native Objective-C Mac applications.

http://www.macruby.org/documentation/overview.html

Another cool thing about MacRuby is that way back in version 0.5 they added support for Ahead-of-time compilation via LLVM. On top of that they also replaced Ruby 1.9 (YARV) thread system with native POSIX threads in order get around the global interpreter lock and improve performance on multi-core systems. Later, support for Grand Central Dispatch was added for even greater support for concurrent programs.

http://www.macruby.org/blog/2009/10/07/macruby05b1.html http://llvm.org/ http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/snowleopard/gcd.html

I realize that this was sort of a side-bar reply, but just wanted to make sure you didn't discount a very cool technology due to an overly simplified, and somewhat uninformed, statement.