You're about to start a new Rails project. Do you type rails <project name>? No, "Stop using the rails command", says Josh Susser. If you create a dummy / default Rails project that's set up just the way you like it with plugins, your own extensions, and all those carefully defined svn:ignore flags, you can just create a new Rails project with a simple svn copy. So simple, but I've totally missed this idea, and it's a real timesaver.
Amy Hoy has written a great tutorial running through the Rails console that's suitable for both complete novices and experts (there are a couple of tricks she mentions that I didn't know at least!). Amy appears to have taken up Slash7 with a new zeal lately, so let's hope we'll see more great content like this on her blog through 2007!
"How To Think Like A Computer Scientist" is a range of online books (distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License) developed by various authors each focusing on a different programming language and explaining computer science concepts with it. Elizabeth Wiethoff has now started the Ruby edition and has made her work so far available online.
css_dryer is a Rails plugin by Andrew Stewart that makes putting together stylesheets for your Rails applications more efficient than ever before. It supports nesting and basic variable interpolation. For example, here's an example of nesting:
Walter Korman has released the first version of a Yahoo! Video library for Ruby. All it takes is a gem install yahoo-video and some simple code like this:
I just came across this excellent article that provides links supporting many of the benefits of Ruby on Rails. If you need to justify your use of Ruby on Rails to employers, co-workers, or even yourself, check it out. Links about performance, scalability, philosophy and evangelism are all included.
I keep getting e-mails about job sites, Ruby jobs, and so forth, so I decided it's time for a bumper "here are all the Ruby and Rails job sites" post! Enjoy..