Although I hate to admit it, yes, I've been developing web applications with Rails for almost two years and I've just started using Capistrano for application deployment. Why has it taken so long?

I suspect that if you're like me (i.e. a Windows guy) you've found this whole new world of Linux, Apache, lighttpd, mongrel, etc, etc. daunting. So at first glance, Capistrano can certainly be a bit intimidating. When I read the list of assumptions Capistrano makes about your Rails app for the first time last year, I was really only able to see one bullet point:

• You know what the heck you're doing, Brian.

Fast forward to the present day. I'm feeling more comfortable with the Linux command line. I have a solid understanding of Subversion and mongrel and even Apache. So why not give Capistrano another go?

In short, it's very powerful. And surprisingly, for most things you might want to do, it's actually quite simple. Sure beats the pants off of SSH'ing to your production server and managing it by hand all the time. If you've been meaning to give it a try, go for it - I promise, it's worth it.

Highly recommended is the Peepcode Screencast on Capistrano Concepts. Although released about two month too late for me (arggh!), it is simply the best way to get yourself up-to-speed. (Disclosure: Peepcode is a paid sponsor of this blog.)

Over at InfoQ, Obie Fernandez writes about RubySSPI, a gem written by Justin Bailey which allows for NTLM proxy authentication for Ruby on Windows.

At the old corporate job, I couldn't gem install rails. It didn't work because our corporate PCs were sitting behind an ISA server. Instead, I had to download each gem (ActiveRecord, ActionPack, etc.) separately, and install each one not knowing the dependencies. It's a pain. I imagine that many of you who are working at Microsoft shops are experiencing the same or similar issues. As Obie points out, this is obviously a big hurdle for those people who are trying to experiment with or, more importantly, sell Rails into their day jobs.

The inability to do gem install was a big mental barrier to adoption in some Microsoft-heavy shops where I've tried to introduce Ruby and Rails. It was also a huge (and constantly recurring) pain for gem commands to fail when I was stuck at a large client with an ISA proxy/firewall. The biggest problem is that a lot of times, nobody at the client site will know anything about the ISA proxy and attempts to figure out why "my Ruby just doesn't work" will meet with confusion, if not outright hostility.

Now you can simply download and install the RubySSPI gem and check out the Readme.txt to learn how to make it all work. I don't have an environment in which to try this myself, but if you've had success with this, please share.

Update: A report from the front lines - it works!

Benjamin Gorlick has posted a quite comprehensive Rails cheat sheet over on his blog. A pretty good resource for those getting started or just need that quick reference. Thanks Benjamin.

The initial comfort level I had with the Ruby community were key in encouraging me to persue this new weird thing called “Ruby on Rails.” But few people seem to ever have that experience with the Microsoft community. Experiments like Channel 9 seemed fresh at the start but quickly emerged as choreographed marketing. Like when the camera pans back to reveal the Western saloon storefront is really a big cardboard facade in a modern movie studio lot.

Today I want to pass along a couple of links regarding the role of the community that forms around particular technologies, both prompted by the recent demise of the NDoc project.

First, Philip (Java devloper) articulates the differences between the Microsoft developer community and other ones including Rails; while Sean (seasoned .NET developer) provides excellent insight as well.

Now this looks cool.

Somebody try it and tell me if your models really can get sawed in half.