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).

I have been following some of your articles for quiet some time now. Sometimes when one knows two or more scripting languages, he may be confused while selecting a language for a particular project. How do you decide? For example both RoR and PHP can be used to develop data driven web applications. Also when do you choose between Javascript or PHP or RoR for form field validation.

Great to hear.
I am currently going through your Essential Ruby class and had a problem in the “Scaffold: Magic CRUD”. I just skipped that chapter and I’m going strong

Great classes and I hope you continue to produce more…!

Cheers from Iceland
Elvar

And FWIW, we are working right now on updating the Lynda.com Ruby on Rails training to the newest version.

That said, I completely agree with the principle behind what you’re saying. I’ve been following your Lynda.com course and it’s defnitely the best introduction to Rails I’ve come across. The reason for that is your step-by-step approach, so that the priciples behind what’s happening are very clear. Since I already had experience generating the RESTful scaffold (and I knew the course was a version or so behind the Rails version I was using) I just assumed things were done differently in the old version, but followed the principles, and I’ve found that really, really awesome. But just explaining the principles the same way would have worked, I think, even when generating a RESTful scaffold. Again as a new user, I’d always rather learn the best practice way to do it from the get-go - it’s just having the priciples behind the Rails defaults explained that really makes the difference.

All that said, I LOVE your course, I think you’re the best Rails trainer out there. I hope to see a bnew version for the updated Rails soon. So, if your experiecne as a teacher suggests this update is bad news, I’m definitely willing to believe you could be right. But I thought you might be interested to hear the perspective of someone who is both new to Rails and a user of your course.

Thanks again!

I said that it is a lot to throw at a beginner. Maybe you have enough experience to make the leap straight to REST, but I work with students from a wide variety of backgrounds and many don’t. Most beginners are not coming from an object-oriented background and have little or no experience with an MVC framework. Some beginners have only a small understanding of the difference between GET and POST, much less PUT and DELETE.

It is my opinion based on my teaching experience (and you are welcome to disagree) that it is easier for beginners to understand the fundamentals of Rails, and then learn REST from there. Essentially to say: look how this is just like what you were doing in language X before and see how much easier it is in Rails. Once they have made that switch, you can move on to learn REST from there.

Like I said, I hope it helps beginners. I know that it will help me to teach them.

The structure of REST is amazingly simple, and it simplifies working with Rails. Perhaps your assumptions about its difficulty come from your familiarity with pre-REST Rails, which I can understand. You’re incorrect, though.