On Ruby on Rails

I've downloaded the "just download it and go!" version of Ruby on Rails. For OS X, this is an application called Locomotive, and if you SearchMash for locomotive, you'll find that this application is actually more popular than real locomotives. (For those of you who haven't found out yet, SearchMashing is like Googling, only AJAX-ier.)

The idea behind the one-stop Ruby on Rails shop is thus: 1) download a single installer, 2) install Ruby, Rails, some sort of web server, and a database in one fell swoop, 3) profit!

Literally. The Rails zealots swear that this is all there is to quick and easy software development. The zealots are wrong.

As I said, I've downloaded Ruby on Rails, and I have played with it. It took a while to get a working demo page, by which I mean it was a concerted effort to get to the page that says "Congratulations on downloading Rails!" or some such nonsense.

Well, now what? I've worked through a few tutorials, and I think I see what the authors are trying to say, but I think that Rails suffers from a little too much momentum: the documentation for Locomotive doesn't match what the application itself does. The documentation for Rails doesn't match what Locomotive does, either. Maybe if I went to rubyonrails.org and went straight to the source I wouldn't have a problem, but the entire idea behind the one-stop application is that it isn't a major commitment, and I can part ways quickly and easily if I don't like it.

Guess what?

It's not that Rails is bad, or that the idea is flawed, though I'm sure if I understood it better, I would eventually come to that conclusion. The problem is that I haven't found any means to be able to use Rails to do anything other than cover what the tutorials do, and I can only accomplish that about a third of the time.

This is unfortunate, because I could really use a fast way to get a database-driven site up and running right now. Too bad Rails isn't up to the challenge of teaching me how to use it yet.