by Logan Anderson

Created on: October 24, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an up-and-coming programming language for web applications. David Heinemeier Hansson developed the original version of RoR for the project-management tool, Basecamp. The language was released to the public in July of 2004. RoR is based on these fundamental design principles:

1. Convention over configuration
Developers can save time on the vast majority of projects by learning RoR's simple conventions. Have you ever spent hours hooking a Java application up to a database and creating objects from JDBC search queries? RoR takes care of much of this automatically, reducing the coding time and allowing you to spend your energy on your actual application rather than configuration.

2. Model/view/controller architecture
RoR enforces the MVC application structure, and you'll be thankful it does. Your RoR project will start out cleanly separated between database, user interface, and controller sections. Projects that are well structured from the beginning scale gracefully and cause substantially less headaches for the developers.

3. Don't repeat yourself
This final principle is perhaps the most important. Repeated code is not only a waste of time but also a maintenance and scalability hazard. Duplication of data opens the door for inconsistency and confusing code. RoR was designed with the specific intention of minimizing the need to repeat code.

With these three principles as its foundation, RoR is a rising star in Internet programming.

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