Ruby On Rails Goes 1.1

MrByte420 writes "The Ruby On Rails team today released version 1.1 of the web framework. From the announcement: 'Rails 1.1 boasts more than 500 fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors. Most of the updates just make everyday life a little smoother, a little rounder, and a little more joyful.' New features were examined back in February at Scottraymond.net and include Javascript/AJAX integration, enhancements to active record, and enhanced testing suites. Not to mention upgrading this time promises to be a piece of cake."

Comments

Looking to get started in Rails?

[RunFatBoy.net]

Along with the API documentation, I found the book "Agile Web Development with Rails" highly beneficial. For a while there, it was the only definitive, concise source of Rails examples.

Even if you're skeptical of the Rails hype, I encourage any developer worth their salt to sit down with it for a weekend. The whole concept of convention over configuration can be a bit mind bending, especially if you're use to Java's XML hell. It's always beneficial to force your brain to adapt to new languages; it encourage contrarian thinking when considering new solutions.

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for Web 2.0.

Re:Kudos to RoR...

[ievans]

If you're using J2EE/Java EE for simple data-driven web sites a la RoR, then you're probably not the target developer for the Java EE platform. I have nothing against these web frameworks and the people who love them, I should add. It's just that the average /.er doesn't see the need for the features that are at the core of enterprise Java, and therefore they dismiss the platform as being too heavyweight. Sure, for small-scale development. The same mentality pops up in discussions on whether, e.g. MySQL needs transactions. It's kind of like hearing somebody who once built a dog house talk about the design requirements of a skyscraper.

With that being said, Java EE 5 will make enterprise Java developer's lives much easier. EJBs, everyone's favorite whipping boy, are a lot easier to code now.

Re:Kudos to RoR...

[helix_r]

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of web-apps are actually in-house apps that have a fairly small number of concurrent users.

Sadly, thousands of dev groups all over the world are slaving away very hard at j2ee simply because, well, its a good thing to have on one's resume or because consultants can bill mega-hours by building a "scalable enterprise application".

If people were honest about their motivations and real scalability requirements, it would be clear that j2ee fits a niche market and that more rapid, easier-to-use dev frameworks like RoR fill mainstream needs.

Re:I haven't heard much

[Sokie]

I think an important thing to note here is that Rails is an web application framework for the Ruby programming language whereas PHP is just a programming language (with a few framework-ish features like session management).

You could see similar productivity benefits by using a good PHP framework. The difference is that Rails is a fantasic framework and most of PHP's frameworks are mediocre. Part of this has to do with some of the language features that Ruby offers enabling Rails to be simpler to use and yet more powerful at the same time.

Personally, I love Rails and I really hope that one of the recent PHP5 frameworks gets up to the point where it is comparable. If it doesn't though, I won't feel too bad leaving PHP (mostly) behind me.