• Interview for Ruby on Rails for CF Developers

• "Ruby on Rails for CF Developers" interview with John Paul Ashenfelter
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• Michael Smith: This time we are talking with John Paul Ashenfelter about his Fusebox and Frameworks-05 talk "Ruby on Rails for CF Developers". So why should a developer come to your session John Paul ?
• John Paul Ashenfelter: There's been an explosion of frameworks in the ColdFusion world over the past 12-18 months, but it's worth keeping an eye on what's going on with web frameworks in other programming languages since each framework is trying to provide the same basic infrastructure for building certain types of web sites. These frameworks can influence the ColdFusion world -- look no further than Dave Ross' ColdSpring (based on the Java Spring framework) and Matt Woodward's CFHibernate (based on Java's Hibernate tool). Many other existing ColdFusion frameworks were influenced by frameworks like the ubiquitous Java Struts and others.

  But of all the frameworks gaining traction today, nothing is hotter than Ruby on Rails. The primary reason for the interest, especially among elite Java programmers, is that Ruby on Rails provides a *very* fast way to build data- oriented websites, especially when compared to many other Java frameworks. Considering that one of the strengths of ColdFusion MX is that it provides a very quick way to build "J2EE" applications without Java getting in the way, any competitor is worth keeping an eye on. And since Ruby on Rails is completely open source, it's easy to experiment.

• MS: OK, so what is Ruby?
• JPA: Ruby is a very interesting scripting language for object oriented programming that incorporates much of the power of Perl, Python, Java, and SmallTalk with hints of Eiffel and Ada. Java programmers like it because it's *so* much easier than Java while still being object oriented; ColdFusion developers should like it for similar reasons.
• MS: And what is Rails?
• JPA:Rails is a web application framework built on top of Ruby. It's embodies a number of programming best practices (the Pragmatic Programmers and Martin Fowler in specific) while being simple and elegant. It's creator just won the OReilly open source hacker of the year award and it simply leaves hardcore web application developers speechless.
• MS: That's a lot to cover in one session!
• JPA: It sure is -- obviously I can't teach Ruby and Rails in one session. But what I can do is point out the similarities that are relevant to CF developers to help prepare them for spending some quality time of their own learning Ruby on Rails. Or I could just show the 15 minute introduction to Ruby video.... and then still have time to highlight things like how the open source ActionStep Flash/Actionscript 2.0 library can hook into a Ruby on Rails backend to produce Flex-like user interfaces using all open source tools. Ruby on Rails is one of the hottest areas of interest for alpha geeks right now and I'm hoping to get people interested enough to take a look.
• MS: That sounds exciting! I will look forward to your talk