I am at chapter 12 and want to “reset” my project with your files, but I can’t just run your example files with script/server nor can I use my current Rails to generate a new project and import your “app” folder into it. Bummer.

Thanks for this! I am what I consider a very technical designer, and every year or so I come back to Rails and find that they have changed SO MUCH in it that all the books and tutorials are obsolete to beginners/novices that have not kept up with all the changes. Even if REST is better, its such a drag that the changes essentially throw all the old learning materials away.

Great stuff,

Rob

To get to the right place in the “Scaffold: Magic CRUD” chapter, generate the Album model, then Admin controller and then use this command to generate the scaffold: ruby script/generate crud_scaffold Album Admin

Overwrite anything it asks you to.

I look forward to your new Rails tutorials. Hope they are available soon.

I say, PLEASE insult me. Assume I know NOTHING. Show me what the code should look like, because the odds are that sometimes I won’t see what you are so sure I should be seeing… especially if the Folks Who Develop Rails keep breaking/deprecating things in favor of their lofty ideals.

For example, how many of us have had to go and modify our config files because the Rails Gods have the energy to deprecate something (I give you, for example, config.action_view.cache_template_extensions) but don’t have the decency/energy/intelligence to change Rails so that “rails ” stops adding the deprecated items into the configuration? How many human production hours are wasted on these kinds of loose ends?

The fact is that I might “know” a thing but be unable to precisely recall the syntax… such as the CRUD controller syntax handed to me by scaffolding. This happens often, in fact, and I rely heavily on the tools described in the majority of tutorials. Adding RESTful methods to Rails was a great decision - but removing the old scaffolding so soon was a stupid, short-sighted, newbie mistake. I hope I do not insult the intelligence of the intelligentsia who rule the ruby roost by pointing out that getting a host of excited newbies reliant on a simple tool (like scaffolding) and then yanking it out from under us is like, well, the good ole days of Microsoft.

Thank you Kevin for giving me back the fundamental tool (scaffolding) upon which MOST extant Rails tutorials rely. A year from now when I’m a snooty Rails expertigentsian, I’ll try not to sneer at the intelligence of the poor devils who are trying to learn the hard way while juggling five or six other new technologies to boot.

I know this is a fairly older post but I wanted to chime in on your post.

I agree with your post. I know when I was going through your courses (which are excellent by the way) I was wondering why the dynamic scaffolding technique was not working when I installed the latest version of ruby on rails. I love the language and I’m slowly learning but the only way I found out how to do scaffolding the RESTful way and a way a beginner would understand was by searching the net for an hour or so.

I’m no hardcore programmer. I’m fluent in XHTML, CSS, & a little in PHP but I wanted to just say thanks for the courses, they have gave me a great insight into RoR and I hope to see more from you in the future.

A client’s needs or project’s requirements are the driving factor in making a language choice. Some clients already know which language they want for a new project. Sometimes you will be brought in to work on existing code. If a client already has a large site in one language, rewriting their site in another might not be in their best interest.

I also factor in the client’s budget, their technical expertise and what ongoing technical support they will have when I complete the project. Simple sites may not need a full framework like Ruby on Rails. For clients with small budgets, it can be cheaper and easier for them to find a PHP developer to help them out down the road. (Rails developers are fewer and in high demand right now.)

For form field validation, I do most validation after form submission in PHP or RoR. I use JavaScript when I want to give a different user experience or to correct simple mistakes (like only letting a user check 2 out of 10 checkboxes).