Ruby off the rails

Answer 1

I almost take insult that ruby is a rails thing. It is like back when CGI was the latest trend and everyone figured that if you knew perl you must be doing it only because you programmed CGI apps. Ruby is just a scripting language for me, although not as mature as python so I somewhat regret having to jump through some of its hoops and recent changes, I still like it and use it. Although I work in a java shop and therefore groovy is the ideal choice for a scripting language, I still use ruby at home and for throw away scripts that aren't needed to be shared at work.

I was considering getting into RoR from all the buzz and how quick/simple it is, but after looking over rails I didn't see anything at all that was amazing or even the least bit innovative or rapidly fast about its development compared to any other framework. The only benefit I saw was that I could code in ruby, which would be nice, but initial setup, server maintenance and scaling is more difficult, thus re-offsetting the pleasure of coding in ruby.

Answer 2

RubyCocoa and MacRuby. Possible to make full Cocoa-based GUI apps without Rails. And then you get to use Interface Builder, too.

Answer 3

Heh, great question.

I used Ruby to convert Excel spreadsheet airport facility data to sqlite3 for the android phone platform while making an app for pilots.

Answer 4

I use Ruby extensively in my work, and none of it is Rails (or even web) based.

My domain is usually client-side Windows applications (wxRuby GUI) and scripts, automating Excel, Internet Explorer, SQL Server queries and report generation (win32ole COM automation). I also use the sqlite, pdf-writer, and gruff libraries for various data munging and graph generation tasks.

Rails' success has been great for Ruby, but I agree that Rails has received so much attention that Ruby's value beyond the web is often overlooked.

Answer 5

I've used Ruby a lot professionally for quick scripts for things like shuffling files around. I'm the same way in that I was using Ruby first before touching Rails at all.

Answer 6

I created a presentation -- coincidentally named Off The Rails -- to discuss Rack-based web applications:

https://github.com/alexch/Off-The-Rails

The git repo includes slides in Markdown format and sample code (in the form of running applications and middleware). Here's the abstract:

Ruby on Rails is the most popular web application framework for Ruby. But it's not the only one! If you think Rails is too big, or too opinionated, or too anything, you might be happy to learn about the new generation of so-called microframeworks built on Rack. And since Rails 3 is itself a Rack app, you don't have to give up Rails to get the benefit of Sinatra routes or Grape APIs.

And here are some references:

• This talk lives at https://github.com/alexch/off-the-rails
• Yehuda's #10 Favorite Thing About Ruby
• Rack
  • rack-test
  • rack-client
• Sinatra
• Grape
• Vegas
• Siesta
• Rerun

Hope you find it useful!