Having moved from a web designer / developer to a full fledged web application consultant, it’s great when you can meet with a new client and within several minutes have a fully working prototype in just several minutes.

And all this is possible by transforming into a Ruby on Rails developer as opposed to a PHP / Java / .NET developer. I have used all 3 technologies, and I cannot imagine having a prototype in a single day working (with the exception of using PHP with the CakePHP framework which is loosely based on Rails) with those technologies.

How is this accomplished? With the help of a new online application called Heroku.

Heroku allows a Rails developer to instantly deploy a simple Rails website/application in under 1 minute.

Once the client and I have sat down and hashed out some ideas of how we want the web application to flow, I can log into my Heroku account and create a sample prototype on the spot. All this while the client is right in front of me. I can do this with my client’s computer or with a laptop I may have brought. (Note - Must be installed with Firefox)

Generating a Customer Scaffold with the built-in command line tool.

The beauty of creating a system such as this is that it allows me to go back to my development machine and Export the code right to my Macbook so I can develop the rest of the logic either within Heroku or my Textmate editor.

By assigning my simple Model Associations and then updating the scaffolding view code, I can show the client a fully operational prototype in minutes.