The relationships stuff is great. I really miss it when I’m using other languages. It makes life so easy, and the syntax really isn’t that hard to grasp. In fact, stick this link in your bookmarks bar [http://blog.nanorails.com/pages/rails_1.1_cheat_sheet], and you’ll have all of the answers one click away.

My biggest issue with Rails is getting used to the somewhat amateur-feeling MySQL tools.

Stick at it. Rails is great. I’ve re-written my entire website with Rails (in record time!) and I’m about to start a second bespoke customer project.

I don’t think the conceptual problem is with Rails, I think it’s been with the books to date that I’ve read that try to explain Rails. Much of the books have assumed their audience are professional programmers moving to a new language; I can see that they would be fine with much of the literature. That was me ten years ago, but now I find I need more conceptual hand holding, not necessarily step by step tutorials.

Now, I don’t program every day, but I can see why PERL is popular. It does so much that’s useful and has the vast CPAN library. But, I think Ruby is easier to learn and does much of the same work.

The issue for me isn’t Ruby, it’s Rails. I find Ruby a language that fits well with the way I think. As I’m reading “Ruby for Rails” by David Black, I’m beginning to understand Rails better as well.

I think the problem early on for me was that “Agile Web Development with Rails” didn’t get me where I needed to go with understanding Rails. If the authors user test it and make changes, then I think it’d be a dynamite book.

I read through Why’s books and liked it, but it doesn’t touch on Rails, if I recall. I do think the Pickaxe book does a good job as well.

As far as Ruby goes, I’d say you might want to play around a bit with Perl, which I’ve found has very similar syntax. Additionally, there’s a great (and free) PDF book floating around, called “Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby” which is a good overview of the underlying language.

And yes, the inital MySQL setup kinda sucks, as I’m on OSX and apaprently MySQL is bound to a different adaptor than my Ethernet connection, so I ended up having to crack my way in from the command-line before I could even start loading data in.

I’m an PHP/MySQL guy myself, so I’m trying to get my head around the database relational model that Rails uses. I mean, hell, I’m tempted just to barge in and write the straight SQL I need to link my two tables up at the moment since the “Belongs to, has many, etc..” relationship system is baffling me.

I hope you get this one straightened out, and I’m glad I’m not the only guy that’s finding this harder than it should be. And hell, I’m using the Agile Rails guide too!

Thiago: I’m not posting often because I’m not putting that much effort into rails. You can see what else I’ve been up to in the mean time at http://friendstalking.joelandkaren.com and http://blog.ideacity.com. I may post more in the future.

Simon. Wow. I don’t know where to begin. I guess making a living as a programmer for 10 years doesn’t qualify me in your eyes as a “real” programmer. I guess you missed the Google ads that were there already, meaning you really aren’t reading this website.

As for a relational database being the key backbone to a real website…not necessarily. Have you heard Tim O’Reilly’s address to the 2006 MySQL conference (http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1641.html), where he points out that flat file databases can work just fine. One example is http://www.bloglines.com.

Actually, I’m looking forward to more of your posts because I’d mildly interested in seeing what caused such a tirade.