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Can a Rails person tell us if this is a big deal or not?

by icey 18y ago

teej 18y ago
This is a significant release. Many of the changes include modularizing Rails' internals. This reduces Rails lock-in and keeps the core more stable. I'm a fan of the performance tweaks in this one, but the important bits are the Rack integration and Ruby 1.9 compatability
- icey 18y ago
  Thanks for that. Is this the release in which Merb becomes integrated with Rails?
  - teej 18y ago
    This is the first release to have major Merb influence. Rails 3.0 (possibly in May) will be the true merging of the projects.
    - icey 18y ago
      I'm very excited for the confluence to occur. I've been looking around for a good web development stack to switch to for personal projects. I'm a .net guy during the day, but it's not enjoyable for me to work on. I have basic proficiency with Python, but I don't care for Django and Pylons doesn't have very good documentation. I am currently learning Clojure, but I get the feeling that I'd have to reinvent a lot of wheels to bring up a basic web development platform (on top of Compojure, I'd imagine). I plan on using Clojure down the road for some business logic I'm working on. It would be very nice to be able to keep all my heavy logic work in Clojure while using Rails on JRuby at some point down the road, so I think it's worthwhile for me to learn both. It's good to hear that they are making so much progress on the Rails core in the meantime. It is starting to sound like a much more robust platform than it did a couple of years ago.
patio11 18y ago
The templates feature ("start every Rails project with a default stack") is a godsend to folks who routinely start new projects, such as freelancers with quick turn around times or internal IT folks who crank out mini-applications. I do a bunch of little utility projects for work (e.g. "Report X was previously generated based on five Excel files which had to be manually synched and executed, now the information is in one place on the intranet and updated every night via a cron job.") When you have a project which takes under a man-week a significant portion of the time is "Oh bloody heck I didn't install the auto-complete gem", "Oh bloody heck I forgot I'd need Google charts again.", "Oh bloody heck where did I put that syntax highlighter plugin", etc. This lets me spend less time fighting Rails configuration and more time fighting Java XML configuration, like God intended.
- mdemare 18y ago
  Yes, this is a great innovation, and really according to the Rails Way. My favorite among the new features (and the other ones are good too.) Now combine this with GitHub (search for rails-templates) and you've got a evolutionary algorithm for discovering the best rails default stack.
- gsiener 18y ago
  Just curious, what gems do you use for those sorts of projects? Any of them on github to learn from/check out?
  - patio11 18y ago
    I have about 15 that I keep coming back to. Most deal with boring business requirements: charting (I use two different variants of Ruby wrappers for the Google Charts API, plus OpenFlashChart 2), data entry, parsing, etc. I have no clue where they're hosted since I use Google as my own personal link memory service.
  - mtarnovan 18y ago
    Some of the gems worth checking out (you can find most of them on github): * authlogic for authentication * openrain-action_mailer_tls for using smtp with tls with ruby <1.8.7 * mislav-will_paginate for pagination * rspec/rspec-rails/shoulda for testing * settingslogic for application configuration * haml/sass for templating Also some useful plugins: git://github.com/Bertg/i18n_action_mailer.git (i18n support in mailers) git://github.com/iain/i18n_label.git (translate labels) git://github.com/thoughtbot/limerick_rake.git (lots of useful rake tasks)

Can a Rails person tell us if this is a big deal or not?

by icey 18y ago

Can a Rails person tell us if this is a big deal or not?

teej 18y ago

This is a significant release. Many of the changes include modularizing Rails' internals. This reduces Rails lock-in and keeps the core more stable. I'm a fan of the performance tweaks in this one, but the important bits are the Rack integration and Ruby 1.9 compatability

icey 18y ago
Thanks for that. Is this the release in which Merb becomes integrated with Rails?
- teej 18y ago
  This is the first release to have major Merb influence. Rails 3.0 (possibly in May) will be the true merging of the projects.
  - icey 18y ago
    I'm very excited for the confluence to occur. I've been looking around for a good web development stack to switch to for personal projects. I'm a .net guy during the day, but it's not enjoyable for me to work on. I have basic proficiency with Python, but I don't care for Django and Pylons doesn't have very good documentation. I am currently learning Clojure, but I get the feeling that I'd have to reinvent a lot of wheels to bring up a basic web development platform (on top of Compojure, I'd imagine). I plan on using Clojure down the road for some business logic I'm working on. It would be very nice to be able to keep all my heavy logic work in Clojure while using Rails on JRuby at some point down the road, so I think it's worthwhile for me to learn both. It's good to hear that they are making so much progress on the Rails core in the meantime. It is starting to sound like a much more robust platform than it did a couple of years ago.

patio11 18y ago

The templates feature ("start every Rails project with a default stack") is a godsend to folks who routinely start new projects, such as freelancers with quick turn around times or internal IT folks who crank out mini-applications. I do a bunch of little utility projects for work (e.g. "Report X was previously generated based on five Excel files which had to be manually synched and executed, now the information is in one place on the intranet and updated every night via a cron job.") When you have a project which takes under a man-week a significant portion of the time is "Oh bloody heck I didn't install the auto-complete gem", "Oh bloody heck I forgot I'd need Google charts again.", "Oh bloody heck where did I put that syntax highlighter plugin", etc. This lets me spend less time fighting Rails configuration and more time fighting Java XML configuration, like God intended.

mdemare 18y ago
Yes, this is a great innovation, and really according to the Rails Way. My favorite among the new features (and the other ones are good too.) Now combine this with GitHub (search for rails-templates) and you've got a evolutionary algorithm for discovering the best rails default stack.
gsiener 18y ago
Just curious, what gems do you use for those sorts of projects? Any of them on github to learn from/check out?
- patio11 18y ago
  I have about 15 that I keep coming back to. Most deal with boring business requirements: charting (I use two different variants of Ruby wrappers for the Google Charts API, plus OpenFlashChart 2), data entry, parsing, etc. I have no clue where they're hosted since I use Google as my own personal link memory service.
- mtarnovan 18y ago
  Some of the gems worth checking out (you can find most of them on github): * authlogic for authentication * openrain-action_mailer_tls for using smtp with tls with ruby <1.8.7 * mislav-will_paginate for pagination * rspec/rspec-rails/shoulda for testing * settingslogic for application configuration * haml/sass for templating Also some useful plugins: git://github.com/Bertg/i18n_action_mailer.git (i18n support in mailers) git://github.com/iain/i18n_label.git (translate labels) git://github.com/thoughtbot/limerick_rake.git (lots of useful rake tasks)