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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."
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.
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.