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).