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Not sure about scalabity and such, but RoR people like to go on about how small and elegant it is... If it's half as small and elegant as they claim, I guess it's scalable then =)

Basecamp is the slick pro site that was done in RoR. The Rails web site has a lot of other examples.

There are MVC frameworks for PHP (a random example I just googled), though I'm fairly certain they're nowhere near as elegant as RoR. phpMVC sure doesn't seem so elegant...

• http://www.43things.com/ Nice amazon-like community thingy
• http://www.basecamphq.com/ Online project management sofware
• http://www.tadalist.com/ Todo-lists
• http://www.snowdevil.ca/ Snowboard stuff

That's an excellent example of the downtime.

My personal experience was the opposite - they needed a web-based project management system, and I simply didn't have enough time to do it. In the end, it was cheaper, faster, and easier to use Basecamp.

Didn't see invoicing mentioned on their site, but I keep hearing a lot of good things about Basecamp:

http://basecamphq.com/

It is a newer offering, which also means it's likely actively gaining new features (they may be open to suggestion), and the price is more than fair IMO.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Basecamp in any way, it just came to mind. For my affiliations, see .sig :)

Ruby on Rails is growing at an astounding rate right now, which is not at least due to the growing number of real-life applications that has been build upon it. Including:

Basecamp -- The original Rails application from which the framework was extracted. A hosted project management application that combines weblog, todo lists, milestones, file storage, and more to keep everyone on the same page in a project.

43 Things -- The "What do you want to do with your life?" application that lets you enter the 43 things that you're currently looking to achieve in life. You can blog about doing it, find others doing the same, and give advice to people who are doing things you've done.

Ta-da List -- The todo list component of Basecamp factored out into a free mini application. Uses XMLHttpRequest and other JS techniques to keep the interface super snappy. Sharable todo lists for every occasion.

And those are just a small sample of all the public applications out there on Rails. On top of that, there's a wide range of e-commerce, content management, business intelligence, intranet systems, and more being build inside a lot of organizations.

Exciting times!

This is not insightful. If you want to see how well it scales look all all the production grade applications out there. The source to hieraki is freely accessible.

Rails is NOT your run the mill proof of concept framework. Its the next level of programming environment right now and here. Available for you to download under MIT license. The people who use it make applications magnitudes faster than the people who aren't. Single people can be as productive as whole teams.

There hasn't been an improvement in productivity like this in recent programming-history.

And don't just put down what you don't understand, give it a try.

Your attitude will just get you boring jobs.

You might want to tell that to Basecamp, 43 Things, and Tada Lists, since they obviously have no idea that Rails isn't good for anything of that magnitude. Might also mention it to all the thousands of people that use those sites, daily, and to the handful of developers who built and deployed those sites in a fraction of the time and cost of other web solutions.

Then again, maybe you shouldn't...

What are you smoking? Ruby on Rails is especially useful for large applications. Take a look at BaseCampHQ for example.

I've been using a great product called http://www.basecamphq.com/Basecamp. its only available on the web, but it allows collaboration, file uploading, and lots of features. There's also a company called Guavasoft that is developing an open source ERP suite similar to Compiere, only not just CRM and its a web-application. Kind of like salesforce.com but expanded.

Maintenance: the best thing is not to think of maintenance as a separate stage of development.

It's also good not to think of software as ever being "finished". I can't think of any projects (even short perl scripts) that I haven't had to go back and work on, sometimes 2-3 years later.

Just assume you are constantly going to have to do iterations and act appropriately. At a certain point, the iterations will slow down tremendously but be prepared to dive right back in at any time.

I.e., first deliver something in 2-3 weeks. Get feedback from the customer. Deliver the next iteration in 2-3 weeks. Get feedback from the customer. Continue until they are happy. After a while they'll come back with a bug report or a feature request. Deliver something new in 2-3 weeks. Get feedback from the customer. .. see how it works? You just pause the project and then come back to it, there is no maintenance stage.

As for specific tools, I personally use basecamp. It's basically a blog. No "issue tracking" or "tickets" or anything like that. Just a place for your customer and you to discuss stuff. I just create a "bugs" category and tell them to post bug reports there. Then we discuss. Then I create a milestone in 2-3 weeks and deliver the next iteration. It's all about communication.

This isn't appropriate for open source or "boxed" software, but for one-on-one with a development team and a customer.

I think the best analogy is that of a garden. First you plant, you do a lot of work, but the work isn't done. You still have to cut weeds, plant new plants, rearrange things every now and then. Rarely do you just destroy the whole thing, and rarely do you ever just leave it alone, it needs care and feeding.

Same with software projects.

You really should take a look at basecamp. It is great for organizing messaging and calendars for a far-flung team. Password protected with multiple logins. Free to try for a single project so there is really no reason not to try it out. Export everything as XML if you move to something else.

GREAT interface. One of the best web apps I have ever used.

BaseCamp is probably the best project manager I've seen, and it's online. I don't get it, why can't desktop apps be this cute and easy to use? Just go look at the screenshots!

Of course, I don't have a paid up BaseCamp membership since I think it's overpriced, but there you go :-) (This is one benefit of regular desktop software)

Dunno if this is what you're talking about, but I'm totally in love with a hosted service called basecamp.

It is ULTRA simple. You can get started in 10 seconds. Barely anything has to be done "up front". Great for bringing people together in discussions too.

It actually has a lot of cool features, it's not really "feature-packed" but the main thing is how easy and simple and flexible it is.

I used to never think I'd like a web-based app but this one is so Mac-like ("it just works")...

You can manage one project for free.

I have used it to organize my plans and set milestones for some of the websites I work on and have been very pleased with the results. Free trails are available, so there is no reason not to try this if you want to be more productive.

I'd be curious if any users here have tried both GTD and basecamp and do they prefer one over the other, or are they complementary, etc.

People get very emotional about tools that help them get things done. Read some of the posts here or the feedback on the basecamp website and you'll see what I mean :-)

I recently started using Basecamp from 37Signals for tracking projects. It's basically a "plogging" system with to-do lists, milestones, file uploading, and one of the most intuitive interfaces I've ever used on the web. I've been tracking internal projects in the way described in the article--I think it's great.

It also makes it really easy to make client-extranet plogs where clients can comment on your entries. Really slick.