First, a little background for those of you who haven't been following along.

When Jeff and I decided to start this blog of ours way back in the summer of '05, we figured very few people would care. We were (maybe still are) two clueless .NET developers experimenting with this newfangled thing called Ruby on Rails. In addition to our cluelessness, most of the demos and tutorials out there were built using OS X or Linux, and most other folks working with Rails were from the Java or PHP community. In other words, there wasn't much help out there for guys like us.

Today, things are changing. Rails is slowly making its way into widespread acknowledgment, if not adoption, by many in the software development community. More than a few of our friends in the Microsoft development community are discovering (and loving) it. And of course, Jeff and I are both now working with Rails full-time.

Recently, I was thrilled to see that Mike Gunderloy (of Larkware fame) is taking a shot at leaving Microsoft-centric development behind in favor of open-source technologies, particularly Rails. Mike is a long-time, well-respected member of the Microsoft community and is the author of one of my favorite .NET development books, Coder to Developer. By the looks of it, he seems to be enjoying Rails quite a bit and is also making the switch to OS X. A recent post from his new, anything-but-Microsoft blog, A Fresh Cup:

James Higgs is the latest developer I’ve seen to publicly express a dissatisfaction with working in the Microsoft ecosystem. In his blog entry A change in my digital life he links back to this blog as well, which makes me either an inspiration or a bad influence (or perhaps a little of both). I’m starting to think it’s time for a support group, or at least a mailing list.

Time for a support group, indeed. So, we thought we'd make a go at it with our new forum. Go ahead, stop on by, and ask those burning questions about developing Rails on Windows, making the switch to Mac, and that sorta thing. We're here to help.