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Laying some track

5 May 2016 Choo choo!

Study association Sticky is based in Utrecht and is for all IT students on the Utrecht University. Within the association there was a member registration application build in PHP, however, that one started to fall apart. PHP is a language that is great for creating simple applications such as a blog or whatever not too complex, for a larger application with a complex database you would want to at least use a framework.

For the new member registration application together with a few we started to build it in Rails, hence the laying some tracks, you get it?! I always try out new languages to find out what works for me. Within Rails the Model-View-Controller paradigm is enforced, it is developed for large applications with complex databases, didn’t I mention this earlier?

Building a Rails application is quite easy, I would really recommend reading the getting started guide and creating the simple blog, Ruby is easy, it is well documented and readable, one of the easiest languages I have done in a while. Just start programming, as long as your database design is solid improvements can always be done. There are some awesome libraries, so called gems, for Rails such as; haml, rabl, devise, and paperclip, and probably a few more.

constipated-koala is open-sourced and is for associations to track their members, groups, and activities. I’m actually quite happy with it, my first lines of code aren’t the best, but they do work. I have implemented some cool features; it is now an OAuth provider for members and has integration with an online payment provider. However, at the moment I cannot open-source it yet since I used some licensed stylesheet but certainly something you will be able to use for your association.