Rails notes, from the .NET side

I’m starting a small experiment to try out Rails, and I’m keeping notes as I go.  From the first day, here’s what I have so far:

• Rails easy to install
• First MySQL (easy)
• Ruby, another MSI and go
• Rails – from gem

• All easy to install, basically a one-click installer for all

• gem installer is crazy nuts
• Don’t forget to actually start the MySQL service (duh)
• rake is also nuts

• rake db:migrate is my friend

• The generators trump ridiculous wizards any day of the week

• We as .NET developers seem to be rather infatuated with projects and wizards

• Ridiculous how little code is needed
• The Rails console script is nice to try things out (it’s an interactive Ruby session)
• I can’t tell when I need to restart the console to pick up changes

On that last point, it’s unbelievably ridiculous how little code is needed.  When using Active Record, I don’t have to create properties and business as I would with any other ORM.  This comes from the ingenuity of Rails, combined with the power of Ruby.  Literally, an Active Record class could be just two lines of code, with as many properties as you wanted.

• Convention over configuration, or “the Rails way”, took exactly 5 minutes to accept
• e is a nice text editor, which I need to remember to pay for someday
• I need to find a good color template for e
• Remember when using e, to set the tab size to 2, and use soft tabs
• I’m surprised how little I care that I’m not in VS when developing in Rails

I’m pretty much primarily using VS right now for a handful of features:

• Compile, run, debug
• Host ReSharper, TD.NET and VisualSVN (thanks Jeremy for reminding me on the last two)
• An explorer-ish window to see my files

I got rid of all the other items quite a while back.  I don’t use the Toolbox window, the Server explorer, or the designer (the biggest waste).

I’m not trading my career for a Rails path, not by a long shot, but I’m really curious to see what other communities have come up with.  More soon…