When speaking to anyone familiar with web development, I have almost invariably been asked the question, “Have you started Rails yet?” With no prior experience, I probably would have assumed that Rails was the name of a programming language, and that Ruby was its antiquated predecessor. We hear so much talk and praise about “Rails Magic” and a treasure-chest of “gems,” that it’s easy to lose sight of the real picture: Rails is simply a framework, a structure built upon a foundation of Ruby.
For the Sinatra portfolio project, we were tasked with creating an MVC/CRUD application that “keeps track of things” for a user (like a Content Management System, or CMS). Like with all new apps, I began by brainstorming different “needs” a user might have that could be solved with my app. As i flipped through ideas, the management of some type of collection seemed to be a natural use for a CMS. My eyes settled on the binders of Baseball cards I have taking space on a shelf.