RAD With Ruby on Rails

Question

I have a question. I'm moving from PHP with Symfony2 to RoR for my next project, with the main priority being RAD when I become fluent in RoR.

What (Ruby/Rails) tools can I use to achieve incredibly fast prototyping and development?

I've read into the Rails generators and such. My team mate has been using Rails for 3 years but doesn't use scaffolding. Does anyone have any gems they use to speed up development time or if scaffolding should be used?

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

Given your requirements of an incredibly fast prototyping and development environment:

Use generators (model, controller and others).

Use scaffolding for prototyping and also for created all the right files, etc.

Use formtastic or (even better) simple_form to make forms MUCH easier.

Use rails3+ now the standard.

Use ruby 1.9.2+

Use Devise for authentication and authorization.

Use cancan for roles- admins, read-only, etc.

Use rubyMine for more hints than you can imagine.

Use VI for cred, ed for even more.

Use mySQL for your database.