I wrote Phoneify over the last couple of weeks using Rails 3, Twilio and a variety of Gems, putting in about 2 hours per day. I'd love any feedback from the HN community on any aspects of the site (design, API construction, documentation, marketing, pricing which is TBD).
On a related note: I have to say that I'm really flying with Rails 3. Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3. Feels really clean, and there are some Gems that make the more mundane parts of the webapp construction fun and agile: Haml/Sass, blueprint, Fancy-buttons, Devise.
I'll probably write up a blog post soon on all the tricks & shortcuts I used to get this off the ground. Many of the shortcuts have to do with design and layout, and less so about backend coding.
> Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3.
Can you explain what specifically you like more about Rails? I've been using Django because my initial exposure to Rails confused me - after running the basic "start project" command there were dozens of files generated - compared to the 4 that get generated with Django (and the 3 or 4 more when you start a Django "app").
I'm also curious if you're planning on turning this site into a money-maker, just because it says joining will get you "50 free", but I don't see any pricing anywhere else?
I can't go as far as saying that I prefer one more than the other. They're both pretty awesome in their own way.
I'm actually way more comfortable with Django, but the Gem eco-system with Rails is amazingly mature, and the Rack based approach of Rails 3 seems to have positioned the framework really well, architecturally. I found Ruby/Rails idioms pretty confusing when beginning. But most of the learning curve w/ simple projects is really about "where stuff lives", and that's the same effort to learn in any framework.
Django pros: Admin, Python, Explicit model definitions (not via introspection like Active Record), South > Rails migrations (IMO), easier to create relational models, query syntax rocks.
this is a great list of gems, just wondering how you discovered all these. What do you use as a discovery tool for gems, or do you just search for them prior to coding yourself? For example I've never heard of awesome_print or kaminari.
http://ruby-toolbox.com/ is a pretty great way to vet (through popularity) gems you're thinking of using. They are sorted by category. aweseome_print is listed in the irb tools category, didn't see kaminari.
On a related note: I have to say that I'm really flying with Rails 3. Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3. Feels really clean, and there are some Gems that make the more mundane parts of the webapp construction fun and agile: Haml/Sass, blueprint, Fancy-buttons, Devise.
I'll probably write up a blog post soon on all the tricks & shortcuts I used to get this off the ground. Many of the shortcuts have to do with design and layout, and less so about backend coding.