Rails Day 2005 a Success!

zestyalbino writes "Rails Day 2005 has finished! In total, there were 55 entries that qualified. Descriptions and downloads are on the site. For those of you that don't know, Rails Day was a contest to see what websites entrants could come up with in just 24 hours using Ruby on Rails."

Comments

Next year

[lastninja]

I bought the (beta) book Agile Web Development with Rails a week ago. So far Rails looks like a really cool web framework. Who knows perhaps will I participate in next Rails Day 2006.

Re:Next year

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great book, even if you DON'T use Rails, you ought to buy and read the book.

It presents the essence of "Web MVC" in a very crisp and understandable way. In fact that's what Rails is, it's really just clear and simple pseudocode for MVC that happens to run!

(Aside: I hesitate to call it true MVC because of the one-way nature of the views.. maybe Ajax will change that but I still feel funny calling it MVC.. maybe "Web MVC" or "MTC" -- Model-Templates-Controller)

The same thing is true for the Programming Ruby book: it's a clear understandable book on object-oriented programming that uses a friendly pseudocode called "Ruby".

I've read both of these books and applied the understanding to my PHP and Perl projects (hey, sometimes you gotta maintain legacy apps you know). Finally I've undone the damage I created by learning OO via C++ and Perl. :-)

Re:Next year

[ogleslurp]

The same thing is true for the Programming Ruby book: it's a clear understandable book on object-oriented programming that uses a friendly pseudocode called "Ruby".

I think that you make an important point here. Aside from their use in allowing us to control the behaviors of complex computing machines, programming languages facilitate the recording of and communication of algorithms and data. The "friendly pseudocode" attribute of the Ruby language makes it particulary useful from this perspective.

Re:Next year

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the opportunity to hear Dave Thomas speak at one point in Raleigh.... cool guy, very down to earth.

DHH is making some good waves as well, and has been very good online about suggestions/patches to Rails and Instiki. I'm not much older than he is and I wish I had that much out there in FOSS land!

Some links from the Railers

[Marillion]

I know some of those from Cincinnati who where participating in Rails Day. Here are some links to their blog entries ...

Mark Windholtz - Member of Team 32.

Jim Weirich - Member of Team 8.

Re:Some links from the Railers

[Jesse_132]

Thats cool.

Britt & I (Jesse) are in Lexington, KY and participated!

I know a Louisville guy in rails, we should do a get rails meetup!

Rails

[metamatic]

Having recently tried out Rails, starting from zero knowledge of Rails and some knowledge of Ruby, it's the closest thing I've found to a productive web framework.

I'd be interested in recommendations for Java frameworks which can provide similar productivity, however. (Much as I like Ruby, it's still a tough sell in the corporate world.)

Re:Rails

[snorklewacker]

Give Trails a try. It's built on Hibernate, and it's still a whole lot more verbose than Rails, but it's probably the closest thing.

I'm glad I work in a company where they just ask me to write the app and don't really care what it's written in. I could write my apps in APL, though they might have kind of a problem with that after the fact. If I had to ask to use Ruby, they'd probably say no, no one else uses it, but if I say "I wrote it in Ruby", they'll hear "I wrote it" first, then I just tell them that Ruby's a lot like perl, and they're fine with it. It's an advantage to being one of the few real coders (relatively speaking) among a department full of perl and shell scripters -- they're just happy you can do it in the first place.

Re:Rails

[Anonymous Coward]

Java and productivity shouldn't be used in the same sentence.

I mean nothing wrong with that, if I have a big app with a 20-person team, and high programmer turnover, Java is exactly what I need. Slow and steady development, lots of compile-time checks, tons of 3rd party tools.

But for most projects with 1-4 focused programmers, highly dynamic languages are much more productive.

To answer your specific question, hells to the no, there's no Java framework like Rails. It really is Ruby that makes the difference.

Some other mainstream languages come close, but the code doesn't flow off your fingers in the same way. Just try using Ruby to "prototype" your next project, and then ask the customer, "I just spent 20 hours doing this prototype, it's actually ready to deploy as-is, would you like me to spend another 100 hours rewriting it in Java? Your call." You either get paid to work in Rails (yay) or you get paid for 100 extra hours of mindless coding (not so bad, depending how much you get per hr).

Of course Lisp, SmallTalk, etc., can do this stuff too. (Aside: are there any "Lisp on Rails" frameworks? How do Lispers write web apps?)

Re:Rails

[metamatic]

The problem is hosting. If Ruby compiled to the JVM, there wouldn't be a problem, but getting a secure sandboxed Ruby web server with clustering is an unsolved problem right now.

There's also the issue of who can maintain the application after I'm gone. There's something to be said for having a solution that runs on a RAIJP array (Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Interchangeable Java Programmers).

Re:Rails

[stevens]

There's something to be said for having a solution that runs on a RAIJP array (Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Interchangeable Java Programmers).

First of all, I nearly spit coke into the keyboard.

Secondly, ain't that the truth. I design software for a living, and instead of designing for a platform, or a CPU architecture, I have to optimise for maintainability. So I design to a RAIJP.

In a Fortune 500, they make sure they have lots of replaceable cogs in the machine, so I have to design to the LCD. It's a maximiztion exercise, but not of variables that I like to work with; instead it's human frailty.

*sigh*

success

[namekuseijin]

i'll buy that when i see a high traffic site like /. written in it.

i tried a version a few months ago and it didn't work all that great with PostgreSQL...

Re:success

[bblazer]

Any chance you can be a bit more specific about what "didn't work great with PostgreSQL"? I use it with postgres, and it works just fine. Maybe I just haven't run into the issues you did. Also, why wouldn't you think that it could handle larger traffic sites?

Re:success

[matchboy]

High Traffic? CDBaby is working on a new site in Rails. ODEO will be launched soon. 43Things.com is based in Rails.

Re:success

[mrmargolis]

To name just a few really busy rails driven sites:

http://www.basecamphq.com/ Tens or thousands of users

http://www.backpackit.com/ Thousands of users

http://www.43things.com/ Big enough for Amazon to care

This is of couse ignoring all the private rails apps used internally by some pretty decent sized companies.

Rails scales amazingly well on lighttpd with fcgi Apache with fcgi does a pretty good job as well.
You can run it on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows Server 2003 and just about any other respected(I use the term loosely with WS2003 on the list) server operating system.

Re:success

[namekuseijin]

it didn't create the form fields in the order specified. granted, it could be a bug then and no more today.

still, i find it a bit worrysome to let a web framework handle all database stuff for me.

how to sell Ruby in the corporate world

[linuxbaby]

Selling Ruby in the corporate world is easy. Just tell them this:

Ruby has the momentum to leverage the dynamic potential of synergies between your skillsets and its core competencies on Internet time. Achieving best-of-breed, mission-critical componentization utilizing standards-compliant scalability, it provides an adaptable, standards-based framework to add value via a fast-track, result-driven development process.

:-)

Re:how to sell Ruby in the corporate world

[matchboy]

Nicely put, Derek. :-)

Project Demos

[Anonymous Coward]

I've compiled a list of project demos that are currently available on the web.

You can find them here: http://www.viarails.net/articles/2005/06/06/rails- day-projects

Some demos to try

[matchboy]

A bunch of people posted specific projects to try out on my blog:

rails day projects to try

Open Source racism redux

[Anonymous Coward]

The Homosexual African American Aliance (HAAA) objects to the term "Ruby". This word has a negative connotation in the homosexual african american community due to it's association with the cross dresing pasty fat white boys from michigan requesting anal sex in truck stop bathrooms.

Have you no shame!!!

I'm feeling trollish...

[MAdMaxOr]

Ok, so I was into rails between 0.7 and 0.9 or so. But I went back to PHP for three reasons.

1. The libraries are thoroughly tested.
2. It's easier to deploy.
3. I trust the underlying stack.

But I learned a LOT from rails, and I use rails-style controllers and models in PHP, although I handle the relations manually. I think rails is a reminder of what a good application of design patterns gives you, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

Oh, and I did my own "PHP day" mad scramble with the idea I had for Rails day...And boy does it kick ass. It has the potential to change the way web developers work. It's easily the level of impact of PHPmyAdmin. Now to package it up...

yes, you are a troll

[namekuseijin]

Rails is not that great as hype may make you think, but PHP is a big pile of crap.

besides, Ruby is far better and expressive a language than PHP.

Thanks for trollin back...

[MAdMaxOr]

PHP, the language, is not my favorite thing to work in. But it's not too bad when you're working in PHP 5, which has good OOP and XML support.

But PHP is expedient. If it gets the job done quicker, with less headache, while still letting me use best practices and design patterns, I'm all for it, obnoxious function naming be damned.

Re:Thanks for trollin back...

[namekuseijin]

still letting me use best practices and design patterns

<sarcasm>

yes, putting related code and classes into discrete modules and explicitely importing them or declaring ( locally scoped ) variables.

</sarcasm>