Ruby on Rails ***The book you hold in your hands is the work of many people. I'd especially like to thank Kit Kemper, Maryann Steinhart, and all of the other Wiley editors who worked on this project for their contributionto its success. ***Welcome to Ruby on Rails If you're a web developer, you're going to love Ruby on Rails - it's theeasiest way to get real web applications going. If you've been a Java web programmer in the past, for example, you're going to think: this is great If you're used to huge, overly complex web applications, you're in for a treat - both Ruby andRails can do a lot of the code writing for you, creating skeleton applications that you can modifyeasily. And if you're new to web programming, you're also in for a treat because you're gettingstarted the right way.Ruby is the programming language you're going to be using, and Rails is the web applicationframework that will put everything online. This and the next couple of chapters get you up tospeed in Ruby, building the foundation you need to start putting Ruby on Rails. If you alreadyknow Ruby, you can skip this material and get directly to the online stuff.But why just talk about it? Why not start by seeing Ruby in action? Heck, why not see Ruby onRails in action, taking a look at just how simple it is to build a sample web application? That willgive you something to keep in mind as you work through Ruby in these first few chapters. Thefirst step, of course, is to install Ruby and Rails.