How Rails Helped Me Decide Which route I’d Take Moving Forward as a Developer !
There are many paths one can pursue as a Software Engineering student (front-end, back-end, full-stack, game/mobile gaming etc). Today i’ll be talking about how learning the rails Framework helped me with choosing my path. Before i tell you which path i chose i’l give you some information about rails to go over quickly incase you aren’t familiar with the Framework.
Ruby on Rails is separated into various packages, namely ActiveRecord (an object-relational mapping system for database access), Action Pack, Active Support and Action Mailer. Prior to version 2.0, Ruby on Rails also included the Action Web Service package that is now replaced by Active Resource. Apart from standard packages, developers can make plugins to extend existing packages. Earlier Rails supported plugins within their own custom framework; version 3.2 deprecates these in favor of standard Ruby “gems”. Since version 2.0, Ruby on Rails offers both HTML and XML as standard output formats. The latter is the facility for RESTful web services. Rails 3.1 introduced Sass as standard CSS templating. By default, the server uses Embedded Ruby in the HTML views, with files having an html.erb extension. Rails supports swapping-in alternative templating languages, such as HAML and Mustache source: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails). Now that you know a little more about rails, I can get into the route i chose as a Developer going forward, why i chose that route.
After learning the Back-end of ruby, I often questioned the amount of fun i was having because i thought back-end work just wasn’t for me. During Phase 2 of The FlatIron bootcamp we began learning the rails framework, Which requires you to know the Front-end (html/css) as well. Knowing the Front-end wasn’t my issue, my issue now was finding which i’d rather do going forward. While in rails we learned Server/Client roles and communication, Which led to us firing up our first server && thats when it hit me 🤯.
That was the moment 🧐 I realized, I was going to be a Full-Stack Developer. The reason behind it was simple, Being able to see what i’m typing in my code editor come to life on a live server, As a dynamic web application that can add to a data base created by me was all it took for me to be hooked. I know, if you don’t know tech you probably have no idea what i just said so i’ll translate. What convinced me to become a Full-Stack Developer was the fact that in this specific field not only would I design how my website looks when you use it, I’d also create a place to securely store your username, password and any other sensitive information you may provide while also creating the features I believe it should have.
To me building a dynamic web app was the most interesting thing i’ve ever done. The ability to create models with attributes and even associations in a single line of code was the icing on the cake for me.
I’ve grown to love Rails so much in just a short time, Mostly because of all the helper methods it provides to make Development much faster && easier to read. ActiveRecord has the power to connect all of your Models, Views && Controllers.
If you follow this MVC/RESTful resource.. Congratulations you’ve just cut your Coding time in half 👏🏾👏🏾.The RESTful resource is simple but a necessity because it gives you 7 HTTP verbs that are required when sending an HTTP request in the browser.
This is how rails helped me choose my route in Web Development, hopefully you’ve learned a little about rails and start to learn this framework yourself.
