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I feel like this discussion wouldn't be getting so much traction if it was easier to learn the differences between specific versions. Today there's enough resou
by stephth 15y ago
I feel like this discussion wouldn't be getting so much traction if it was easier to learn the differences between specific versions. Today there's enough resources out there to learn about rails and/or the differences between versions and/or 'the right way' of doing things, but it's scavenger hunt meets jigsaw puzzle. Currently, if you don't follow the Rails evolution regularly, going out there and catch up with it can be intimidating for some.
There's a need for a central Rails reference that makes this task trivial. Maybe a document with some sort of interactive diff functionality that allows to see specific version differences side by side in a friendly manner. Some system that doesn't force the writers to re-think a full document for every version, that can evolve without erasing older information, and that assists the reader by showing specific chunks of information that she should read in order to catch up to the specific version she is aiming for. Getting this started is a non-trivial task, but it seems like there's enough energy, innovation and attention to detail surrounding Rails to solve this problem.
- acangiano 15y agohttp://apidock.com/rails http://apidock.com/rails has compatibility information for Rails versions. Not quite what you'd like but definitely helpful.
- wwkeyboard 15y agoI think part of this problem comes from the number of blog posts that don't reference versions when explaining something. This adds to confusion if the topic has changed and the post is not updated/marked out of date.
- bonaldi 15y agoI abandoned Rails years back because of precisely this problem. Releases would break or arbitrarily drop functionality, with little or no documentation. If you got more than a few point releases behind you were really screwed. I couldn't explain the dearth of documentation for these changes at all, it seemed so lax compared to other platforms. Then I realised all the incentives for those who would produce the documents were towards producing books and paid-for screencasts, and knew my time was up.
- bcardarella 15y agoPrior to Rails 3 Rails' versioning scheme left a lot to be desired. However, starting with Rails 3 it is supposed to be following Semantic Versioning. (http://semver.org http://semver.org) This should help with giving people an idea if they can update without fear their app will break.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]