the.railsi.st is Patrick Crowley.

I'm a Ruby developer and this blog is a record of my experiences using Ruby on Rails to build web apps.

I also run SD Ruby, a local Ruby group in San Diego known for its podcast.

I'm finally getting around to blogging about Rails.

Why Ruby on Rails?

I spent six years building web applications with PHP. And that worked pretty well. Back in 2000, PHP was considered light and agile.

But, as the industry grew, and web apps became more and more sophisticated, PHP couldn't keep up. Yeah, I could easily write 20,000 lines of code (and I did)... but why?

I was burnt out. Too much code. Too much work. Too little fun.

Rails changed all that.

Why the.railsi.st?

In the Rails community, most people prefer to call themselves rubyists. And they're right... if you use Rails long enough, you realize Rails is special because Ruby is special. The elegant simplicity isn't something DHH created... it's Ruby.

But, to me, it's the other way around. I'm a railsist... because I'd never have gone down this road without Rails. I remember thinking, "A programming language that's big in Japan? Who cares?"

But I was wrong. And Rails showed me why.

How did I start using Rails?

While working for Eventful, I'd been exposed to the work of 37Signals.

So when RubyConf came to San Diego in 2005, I crashed the conference with my friend Ted. After seeing all the talks, I was sold. I bought a copy of Pickaxe and Agile, and started playing around. A few months later, I deployed my first production Rails app.

Since then, it's been a great ride.