Ruby On Rails 1.2 Released

Scooter[AMMO] writes "David Heinemeier Hansson sent a post to the Rails 1.2. This new version adds a slew of buff and polish to the rest of the system, as well several new features like RESTful interfaces, response formats, improved multi-byte support, and more. If you haven't checked out the web application framework that aims to renew joy within its users, give it a look. You may be amazed at how easy it makes things without sacrificing power or functionality."

Comments

Re:I never quite understood the benefit of Rails

[partenon]

And after looking at some presentations on their site, I still don't. Some time ago, I was presented to Rails by a friend. I was skeptical at first, but after watching the video, I realize it is a powerful tool. Then, Rails was /.ed by the first time. And the second. And so on. And people still think Rails is only for "database input/output without customization". Can't they see the power behind it?? Something that was so clear to me at very first sight can't be that difficult for others to see. My only explanation to it is that people is afraid of change. And no technology can change that.

While it is very simple to build applications via scaffold (automatic screens base on database schema), it is only *one* feature in Rails. Try it for a week. *Then* you'll see the real power of Rails. Sustainable development speed*, a very nice language (Ruby), nice documentation (it could be better, but it is ok) and so on.

seems that the way it handles databases is exactly what DBA's hate to see DBA's may hate the way Rails uses databases. The framework isn't focused on "computer ease of computing", but on "developer ease of developing". So, it may not fit for a huge company, w/ hundreds of offshore developers, SA's and DBA's. It is specially useful for small companies/teams, where speed of innovation is their key to get into the market. Example: to start building Rails applications, one just needs to download the ruby interpreter (port install ruby), rubygems (port install rb-rubygems), install rails (gem install rails), and start the application (rails MyApplication). Try that :-)

I also wonder about the performance and memory profile Its footprint on memory isn't any bigger than a similar application developed in Java. Have you ever looked how much memory the app itself + application server uses? And as for performance, it is ok. This is an old discussion, and rails folks usually says it is better to develop an app in 2 months than 12. And the money for the other 10 months can be used to buy more servers, if needed (but I can tell you that you can handle 4GB of transfer/day in a serverpronto.com entry level machine... warning: it is not a benchmark, just an idea).

All it seems to do is offer a way to do very similar and simplistic web apps without any real-world functionality. I really hope you aren't serious or you just don't want to open your eyes... Should I send you some examples of sites built using Rails?

So, instead of seeing the presentations, try to put your hands on it w/ rose-colored glasses** . If you don't like it, at least you'll learn new way to do things, which can help you in your next project ;-)

* try to keep a sustainable development speed w/ one of the standards in the market: struts/spring + hibernate. It is almost impossible to achieve.
** sorry, I'm not a native english speaker... I hope it was used in the right context :-)