Bluehost Python and Ruby on Rails Support
Both Python and Ruby are high-level programming languages. Both of them are very popular among web developers since they have a rapid development cycle. Python was created with the goal of maximizing the programmer’s productivity and producing a readable code that was easy to debug. Ruby was produced with the goal of making programming pleasant, and giving programmers more than one way to accomplish the same task. Both are object-oriented languages, both have full Unicode support, and both support the idea of metaclasses, or classes that are treated as objects.
While not a language itself, Ruby on Rails is a framework for working with Ruby. It offers developers templates and engines to streamline the programming process, and make things like creating basic websites easier. With this Ruby framework, programming applications that previously could have taken months to develop can be created in a matter of days or weeks, instead. Ruby on Rails was designed with the idea of ‘Convention over configuration’ and ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’ in mind. Convention over configuration saves programmers time by automatically naming areas within databases with the corresponding name in the model. Don’t repeat yourself saves time by locating all of an application’s pertinent information in a single place. Ruby on Rails relies on a web browser in order to run, and is an open source application.
Bluehost supports Python, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. This makes it an attractive hosting solution for web developers, since these two languages and Ruby’s framework are all very popular among them. A lot of large sites, like Twitter, Shopify, and Groupon, are all built with Ruby on Rails. Many others, like Shopzilla, rely on Python. Right now, Bluehost offers users Ruby on Rails version 2.3.4, and Python versions 2.6 and 2.4.3.
To access Python, Bluehost users must login to SSH (Secure Shell, Bluehost’s network protocol) and type ‘python’ in shell. To use the later version of Python, Python 2.6, the user must type in ‘python 2.6.’ To access Ruby on Rails, Bluehost users must type in ‘rails.’ Not all gems for Ruby on Rails are installed on Bluehost, chiefly for security reasons. Bluehost users can determine if Bluehost has upgraded their versions of Python and Ruby on Rails logging in to SSH and typing in ‘python -V’ or ‘rails -V’, respectively.
To install new gems, Bluehost users may contact Bluehost to request a gem, or install it themselves via the .bashrc file in their root directory. Editing the file and appending the correct export path to the end of it will allow the user to add their own Ruby gems to their Ruby on Rails installation. Bluehost’s Ruby interpretor itself is located in /usr/bin/ruby.
A lot of the biggest sites on the web rely on Ruby and Python. They’re powerful, high-level programing languages that make it possible to do things that HTML simply can’t touch. Fortunately for Bluehost users, Bluehost offers excellent support for both Python and Ruby on Rails, including recent versions of both languages.