"Rails...shudder"
I was reading through Paul Graham's post on the Arc forums earlier today, where he challenged people to implement a specific program in as few lines of code as possible. The whole thread is fascinating. But one thing caught my eye: about half way through, one post implements the program in Ruby using Ramaze. He also says something along the lines of how that's way better than Rails (and "shudder" presumably at the thought of using Rails).
That's part of a bigger anti-Rails trend I've seen recently, including Zed's now-famous rant. I've seen a bunch of these, some big, and some small. Note: I myself don't have strong feelings towards Rails, either pro or con. It's fun for some things, not fine for others, like virtually all frameworks.
Overall I see it as a sign of health in the Ruby community, because with more maturity come more use-cases (or vice versa), and these lead to alternative thoughts, frameworks, implementations, etc. It seems like it took Ruby 2-3 years to get to this stage. How long did it take Java? C++?
1 comments:
I'm kind of... stumped to be the cause of a blog post ^^; Yet I'm probably less 'anti rails' than you think I am. :)
Let me expand on what I meant with the 'shudder'.
I've never used rails (for more than tests); I was on ruby before rails came along and brought the public limelight with it. I navigate by the 'smell' of things, which mostly leads me away from anything which gets too crowded.
I don't think Ramaze is better than Rails. It just smells better. Rails has a way better infrastructure, better (also commercial) support and due to the sheer amount of usage is probably a very good general tool.
However, the latest movement away from Rails (of which quite some came to Ramaze lately) with the reason that Rails is 'limiting their freedom', is exactly what makes me shudder; the limit of freedom.
It's funny how zeds rant rouses so much feelings. Even mine. Having been one of the "Nitro" crowd when he was around makes me strangely happy...
Like you (I guess) I strongly belive diversity is good. Rails is good for a lot of people and a lot of usecases. Others will just find something which works for them. Which is why ramaze.net features the probably most extensive list of web-frameworks available for ruby. Choose what is best for the usecase, not what the current hype leads to.
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