Introduction for the lead of the event

This page is meant to for the lead or organiser of the event. This page covers how to introduce the concepts of HTML/CSS/JS, Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

HTML/CSS/JS

HTML, CSS and JS are the languages that browsers understand. A web server’s job is to create “files” that use these languages and send them to the browser.

There are several way of doing this.

Static:

The server has files saved on its disks and makes these available to the internet.

Dynamic:

The server makes the files and sends these “on the fly” each time they are requested.

There are a lot of languages and frameworks that do this already. Other examples are:

  • PHP and Symphony
  • Python and Django

We are using Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Ruby On Rails

Ruby on Rails is the full name of “Rails”. We use the short version of the name.

Rails is a framework that makes building a website a lot easier and faster. There are already 100 of 1000 of lines written that do a lot for you, like:

  • Network communication
  • Database interaction
  • Translations (if you would want that)
  • Security against common web mistakes
  • etc…

Ruby

Ruby is a programming language. Rails is written in this language (thus Ruby on Rails).

Ruby has been created to be fun to use. And this is what we will do today too: we’ll have fun by using Ruby and Rails :)

What will we do?

  • We will start by building a simple page with info about yourself (HTML)

  • Further on, we will style it and animate it (CSS + JS)

  • Then we will slowly feel some pain and understand the need for automation: this is the point where we will move on to Ruby and Ruby on Rails (Ruby + Ruby on Rails).