project: Image Slideshow — method: RubyOnRails

i’ve decided to learn RubyOnRails.  Rails is a programming language/framework that comes with some prepackaged “programming shortcuts” which allow developers to write programs much faster.  it’s more of a “do this” and the app actually does that sort of thing as opposed to writing lines and lines of code for weeks to make it “do this.”  i learned about RoR months ago when the lead developer for ampache was talking about possibly using it instead of php for the new version.  so i wiki’d ruby on rails and thought it sounded interesting.  still, i hate programming and it still sounded like a programming language.

 then i read this article in the new Wired.  it still sounds like a programming language but the fanaticism surrounding it sounds like it comes from taking much of the coding out of programming.  and so it sounds like the language for me.  maybe.  i mean, we’ll see, but the possibility of being able to create “a simple blogging application in 15 minutes” makes it sound pretty damn promising.

 so i asked erin to think of a web 2.0 type app that i could try to write to learn rails and she said an image slideshow since people always want that.  and so that is my new project.  i will try to keep the collective you posted.