Demonstrating Rails to a PHP developer

Rails
1

Hey,

One of my good friends is a PHP developer and has been for a long time.
PHP
is also the only language he knows and as such has never used a true OO
language.
I’d like to convert him to Rails as I know in the long term it’d save
him a
lot of time, though I need to really wow him to justify dropping his
current
code base as well as learning a new language (OO theory included) and
the
Rails framework.

So I’m looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest
wow
factor.

Cheers
Ian.

2

So I’m looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest
wow factor.

  1. The rails video - kinda does it for you
  2. Scaffolding - everyone loves that
  3. ActiveRecord - show the 2 lines of code it takes to hook up the
    object/db mapping. Obviously more impressive if you’ve used OO before
    :0)
  4. Console
  5. Migrations

Typically the things we’re really impressed with as newbies will turn
out to be the least used when we become more experienced. The coolest
thing about rails for me turned out to be ruby :0) However, the
nicesities like scaffolding give people the initial turn on.

I’d say the best/most fun thing to do is sit him down and do the blog
demo yourself.

Steve

3

So I’m looking for tips on what features are likely to have the biggest
wow factor.

  1. The rails video - kinda does it for you
  2. Scaffolding - everyone loves that
  3. ActiveRecord - show the 2 lines of code it takes to hook up the
    object/db mapping. Obviously more impressive if you’ve used OO before :0)
  4. Console
  5. Migrations
  1. Breakpoint
  2. Prototype/Scriptaculous integration
  3. All the various before/after hooks.
  4. Model validation.
4

On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 11:18:01AM -0500, Philip H. wrote:

  1. Breakpoint
  2. Prototype/Scriptaculous integration
  3. All the various before/after hooks.
  4. Model validation.

  1. Routing, and the fact that when you add a method to a controller,
    you
    automatically get a corresponding valid url to go with it.

  2. Builder templates

  3. Migrations. Again. And again.

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- Adam

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