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Barry Burd

Ruby on Rails: Create a Web Interface to a Database in Minutes

Ruby is an interpreted, reflective, purely object-oriented programming language. Ruby has open classes, messages rather than method calls, closures, and "duck" typing. With a Ruby add-on named Rails, you can create a simple Web application (a Web interface to a database) in minutes. You can enhance the application with other add-ons -- add-ons for searching, for authentication, for credit-card processing, and for other common tasks. Some real-world practitioners claim a five- to ten-fold productivity increase when they switch from Java to Ruby on Rails.

A new version of Rails (Rails 2) was released in December 2007. This year's TCF Professional Conference talk is for newbies and for people familiar with Rails 1. The talk introduces Ruby on Rails and describes the new features in Rails 2.

Biography:

Barry Burd is a professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. He’s the author of several books, including the textbook Pascal by Example (which is still in print!), the ever-popular Java For Dummies, and Ruby on Rails For Dummies.