Hi Everyone, I'll try to make my opening summary as short as possible. I work as a hobbyist in web development (using Dreamweaver CS4, Photoshop CS4, PHP, Swishmax2(flash)). My dominant sites are all on "linux/unix" boxes but I program on a Windows Vista machine. I program for fun with C++, Autoit, Actionscript, and PHP for the most part. My background is that I've been in the IT industry for more than 16 years and I'm an extreme troubleshooter but I'm also a Windows System Administrator. That basically means I'm a jack of all trades where windows is concerned because I've seen a lot of things over the years as I dabble a lot.
I have a photographic memory with a logical foundation set within. Therefore, I learn a lot faster than most people because I can retain information like a sponge to water. I have a lot of time available (in-between job searches right now) so I decided to spend my time wisely. About one week ago, I decided to push into Ruby with the idea that I'll eventually get into Ruby on Rails. I've researched it and it's the route I want to go. Anyhoo, I do not use linux and am not very familiar with linux. Some folks say it's not hard to use Ruby on windows and it's come a long way so I started pulling in some research materials. Here's what I've accomplished in one week so far: I read my first ruby book (Beginning Ruby - From Novice to Professional) by Peter Cooper. I installed Ruby using the one-click-installer I learned how to install and use gems. I learned the difficulty with installing gems that needed --platform=mswin32 I created my first program from scratch (an html parser I called scraper.rb) which pulls statistics off a website and stores it in yaml. I was instantly thrilled with the concept of classes, methods, even happy with how interpolation worked with variables. I thought to myself this is going to be great! I can design a class based app that can become modular as I build it and not suffer through past programming experiences. I was just about to get into RoR when I thought to myself it might be better to go with the latest ruby. So, I managed to upgrade my ruby to 1.9.1. I ordered another book from O'Reilly which is supposed to help with transitions from 1.8 - 1.9. I found out there were a lot of issues upgrading, namely with how a lot of the gems I used to be able to use no longer worked. The biggest issues I face now are using mysql on windows and also that my DBs online are 5.1. Keep in mind the online DBs are in fact on a linux/unix box and not on a windows but I do my programming on a windows box. Make sense? I hope so. It's just a convenience for me because I'm more fluent with windows. However, now I cannot get mysql to work. I did work through a lot of websearches and found the best install fix for me was something like: gem install kwatch-mysql-ruby --platform=mswin32 --source=http://gems.github.com/ However, when I tried to install it, I get the following error: *** ERROR: can't find mysql client library. *** extconf.rb failed *** I use mysql 5.1 on my windows machine and use Wampserver as my original development server/platform. So, I'm a little frustrated but I know I can get through this. And, I don't want to give up on Ruby at all. So, my questions are as follows: 1. What would you recommend I do concerning developing on a windows box when my websites are located on linux/unix. Is it doable? Do I have to make a lot of adjustments? 2. If I had to go to linux to use RoR effectively, how steep is the learning curve going to be and what would I need to do to ensure that I can dual-boot on both vista and linux where appropriate? 3. What other suggestions can you give me to help improve my transition to ruby on rails (things that you might have encountered and learned from) 4. Is it worth it to stick with RoR as a native windows user or should I be thinking about something else. I apologize for the very long post but I needed to start with a wide audience to retrieve the best answers. Many thanks to any who read and respond accordingly. J.D. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
