So this week I read an article about the Rails web framework for the Ruby programming language that aimed to illustrate how you can build Ruby applications 10 times faster than you can build them with your favorite Java framework. The idea of saving 90% of my programming time is pretty compelling, so I eagerly jumped in. There’s only one problem — I followed the instructions in the article as closely as I could, and the demo didn’t work. When I tried to start up the Web application and access the database, I just got a stack trace. If I knew more Ruby, I could probably figure out what’s going on, but for now, I’ll have to keep wasting 90% of my time. What a bummer.

Update: With some help from the Ruby on Rails IRC channel, I figured out that the problem is that I have my MySQL 4.1 installation set up to use old-style passwords to remain compatible with PHP. So it’s PHP’s fault. That makes me feel better.