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I wrote a book on Merb and was an active contributor. Before that I had developed several apps with Rails. That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good nat
by foysavas 1y ago
I wrote a book on Merb and was an active contributor. Before that I had developed several apps with Rails.
That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition and I don't view the Rails vs Merb period as itself having been problematic.
Merb devs believed we could make app development both simple to start (as a single file like Sinatra) and easy to evolve (into a modular codebase with Rails-like conventions). Existing outside of the Rails ecosystem allowed Merb to pursue that distinct vision.
The Merge between Rails and Merb, accreted many of Merb's modular architectural enhancements to Rails, but sadly deprecated the overall Merb vision. To me that was a shame, but I still wouldn't describe any of it as toxic.
- leakycap 1y ago> I wrote a book on Merb and was an active contributor. It might be a situation where you see it differently because you were involved or benefiting from the way things unfolded > That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition [...] wouldn't describe any of it as toxic Competition can be healthy, Rails vs Merb was anything but. Quotes from Yehuda himself: ••• "I was just so blinded by tribalism that I never even bothered to check how fundamental the disagreements really were." ••• "waging an all-out war against Ruby on Rails from inside of a company that makes its money selling Ruby on Rails deployment is a pretty bad life strategy" ••• "It's so easy for our brains to turn disagreements about priorities into value conflicts. It takes a lot of effort to see past that mistake." https://yehudakatz.com/2020/02/19/together-the-merb-story/ https://yehudakatz.com/2020/02/19/together-the-merb-story/
- foysavas 1y agoEngine Yard's management took several strategic missteps over the years. One of them was stifling Merb. The quotes from Yehuda describe his difficulty in making the best of a forced merger. Ezra's vision for Merb and DHH's vision for Rails were distinct. Both warranted development. Over time, I assume they would have collectively strengthened the Ruby community. It was a mistake for Engine Yard's management to have instead framed it as zero sum and forced a merger.