9 ms·

Rails 3 : Vaporware To Awesome

65 points by r11t 17y ago

eob 17y ago
Every year I have this realization that I need to put a week aside and re-lean Rails because it changes so fast. But I'll take that any time over a framework that just atrophies.
cmelbye 17y ago
Rails 3 is going to be so cool. It looks like they're expanding on the features relating to Rack, which is going to open so many possibilities. Kudos to the Rails team!
tortilla 17y ago
Video: http://sdruby.org/video/075_rails3.m4v http://sdruby.org/video/075_rails3.m4v (366 MB)
- moe 17y ago
  The sound quality on that is.. unbearable.
  - oomkiller 17y ago
    I second this! I also looked at the other video's SDRuby has up, and all of them I have tested are also horrible. If someone from SDRuby is here, FIX YOUR AUDIO!! It sounds like my dad's AM talk radio going through a tunnel!
    - moe 17y ago
      I would also like a fix. It sounds like someone simply encoded the video with way too strong audio-compression - the original material is probably fine. I'm very interested in the talk but it's near impossible to understand him and the warbling noise gives me instant-headache. No way for me to consume it as it is.
  - alx 17y ago
    It seems it has been fixed, I watched it last week and recheck it today, far easier to understand.
- Timothee 17y ago
  I suppose this is what should have been submitted, because the slides are pretty dense...
  - emmett 17y ago
    I hate video, and don't mind slides. I prefer the submitted form.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
SlyShy 17y ago
I have to say, this looks like a major step up. The performance benchmarks are very impressive on their own, so that Rails 3 is also more flexible and easy to configure is great.
tptacek 17y ago
Are these benchmarks for real? Is there a 1.8.6 vs 1.9 thing happening here?
- seregine 17y ago
  you saw that they're in microseconds, right?
- tptacek 17y ago
  (to answer my own question: yes, there's a 1.9 thing happening here).
fizx 17y ago
The thing that excites me most is that Rails is moving to jQuery with "unobtrusive javascript" for all of the ajax helpers. Currently, its Prototype with inline spaghetti code.
rykov 17y ago
Most excited about the new router - doing subdomain and custom domain support is a hack in Rails 2.3
chriseppstein 17y ago
Looks like an awesome web framework. Rails blew my mind when I first learned it, but over the course of the last two years the various warts and inconsistencies have become apparent. I look forward to learning this new web framework that is also called ruby on rails ;-)
- Maciek416 17y ago
  That's how I've felt about it too. Back when it came out, Rails was very easy to fit into your brain in the course of a day or two of absorption, but now it's a very large collection of ideas, DSLs and overall lingo. It's probably more than a little bit overwhelming to newcomers, and even some of those of us who come back to it every year and scratch our heads in awe at just how big the Rails universe has become. I also hope that Rails 3 will cut down some of the noise for newbies and oldies alike.
  - patio11 17y ago
    The thing I like about Rails is, unlike some technology stacks I could name (why hello there Enterprise Java), you don't have to know it all on day one. The first version of my site was an awful lot like Baby's First Bookstore, Rails 2007 Edition. It has gradually accumulated more features and sophistication as I've grown as a web programmer. A lot of the complexity in Rails is hidden until you need it. If you don't understand Rails caching yet, that's no problem, you don't have to understand it until you actually have to use it. Ditto the more advanced ActiveRecord tricks like named_scope, or the deep rabbit holes in the general vicinity of templating engines.
    - gvb 17y ago
      The term I like (don't know where I picked it up) is "discoverable." The simple things are easy, but you can discover over time how to do the complex things. This has two benefits: the obvious benefit is that it allows the user to be productive immediately, without training, without having to memorize a manual. The "hidden" benefit is that the program becomes an adventure game... it continues to surprise, delight, and reward the user long after the excitement of the initial purchase has faded. IMHO, this is Apple's "secret sauce." Their hardware and software is just hardware and software, it can be mimicked. The thing that sets their hw/sw apart is its discoverability, and that is very, very hard to copy because it is a thought process, a concept, a zen. Jason Fried makes this point in SvN: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us-or-anyone-else http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us... (with a recursive reference to HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 :-).
gfodor 17y ago
Looks really cool. It's definitely not cool though that Yehuda's keeps saying things like "Sinatra has failed because...", and "because Prototype sucks..." and so on. I'm only half way through the video, but it really bothers me when smart software developers disparage other open source projects that came before the latest shiny framework or tool. Especially when it's to brag about whatever project it is that they're currently working on. It's childish, rude, and basically makes you look like a dick no matter how whiz bang cool or better what you're currently working on actually is. Some day, Rails 3.0 will be old news and I'm sure he won't appreciate it when some young kid gets on stage saying "Rails 3.0 sucked, how could they have been so stupid?! Look how much better my code is!" Give credit where credit is due -- and remember we all stand on the shoulders of giants, show a little respect, eh?
- ilaksh 17y ago
  Some day, code will be old news and I'm sure you people won't appreciate it when some young kid gets on stage saying "textual non-interactive computer code sucked, how could they have been so stupid?".
- techiferous 17y ago
  > It's definitely not cool though that Yehuda's keeps saying things like "Sinatra has failed because..." Agreed. That's apples and oranges! Rails and Sinatra are different tools for different problems, IMO.
  - freetard 17y ago
    > That's apples and oranges! Rails and Sinatra are different tools for different problems, IMO. Actually no. With rails3, rails will just be a meta gem. If you install rails-core you'll get something like Rack plus not much more which is basically what sinatra is.
    - techiferous 17y ago
      Ah, looks like I have some Rails 3 learnin' to do! Thanks! :)
ilaksh 17y ago
Rails 3 is waayy faster and better then. Rails in general is great. Its really got the abstraction thing and taking into consideration crazy things like developments in software engineering practices and programming languages. Having said that, I don't really know much about Rails. This comment is not about Rails. I just have to tell people because I keep thinking about something and almost no one seems to get it and realistically I am probably never going to follow through with it so if I can't communicate this idea it might not go anywhere. And with all of the positive progressive things Rails developers are doing, maybe, just maybe someone reading this will get what I am talking about. Basically, I keep thinking, especially just now when I was looking at that Rails code in his slides, the way everything is so well abstracted and so _structured_, and how he keeps going to the model with the circles connecting, and how we keep repeating keywords all over the place, and how no one ever wants to look at unsyntaxhighlighted code anymore, I have to say _again_, one-dimensional non-interactive (or two dimensional if you insist on calling it that) textual representations of software are outdated and unnecessary now. Sure, we do still have to type a lot of text in, and I am not trying to throw out my keyboard, or stop thinking or something. But there just really isn't any reason we have to be limited to text on a daily basis anymore. People just have a cognitive bias towards the status quo which is preventing them from taking the step to add a layer of two-dimensional widgets or something over the code. I am talking about code generating widgets, or intentional software, or a generic interactive graphical representation for function calls, control flow, model development. Things like that. Because basically a lot of code, even the things that involve a lot of abstractions with embedded textual mini-languages in them, are mostly mapping from one thing to another. Doing transformations on structures. Code-completion is a start, but what we really want are more useful iteractions with the models and algorithms. The way forward is things like code generation, projectional editing, live coding, dynamic evaluation and representation (widgets) etc. Anything that provides more interactivity to the software development process is where we should be going. And the next big step is to get out of the limitation of using textual code as the default editing level. Often times we are basically configuring/connecting functions/components, editing models, or using text to generate two dimensional features like tables/grids, UI forms, sometimes mathematical functions, or dynamic systems that we really need to interact with at runtime with dynamic graphical editors to manipulate and comprehend properly. So we should start on the two-dimensional, graphical level. Also, downloading open source projects whose claim to fame is completeness and ease of integration and then reading documentation which amounts to what commands to enter on the command line and then cutting and pasting and editing configuration text files in terminal windows is not cutting it anymore. There are these things called (graphical?) components. We can accomplish this with things like projectional editors, or even more simply by interacting with widgets that generate code. And yes, I know what LabView is, and no, that tool and other attempts at visual programming systems haven't proven anything. Its just hard to get these types of tools to be as generic as text-only systems, especially fully integrating keyboard and text use, AND, the number one hindrance, I believe, is status quo bias like loss aversion.
ilaksh 17y ago
When is Rails 3 going to be released and where do I download the current (unstable?) Rails 3 version?
- rads 17y ago
  The latest Rails is at GitHub: http://github.com/rails/rails/ http://github.com/rails/rails/ As for the release date: "[T]he Rails 3 release date will likely be in the first quarter of 2010, or even before Christmas 09 if things go really well." (http://railsnotes.com/745-rails-3-release-date-news/ http://railsnotes.com/745-rails-3-release-date-news/)
  - jpcx01 17y ago
    Alpha release maybe. I'd estimate at least 6 months between the first alpha release and the final. Yehuda's been pretty clear that he wants all the plugins to be updated and working with the new public api before they go final on 3.0
riso 17y ago
I have always liked how Merb was structured. With Rails 3 is there any reason to use Merb for new projects?
- hexis 17y ago
  No, Rails 3 is also Merb 2. http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/ http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/
mrinterweb 17y ago
Am I the only one who perceives minimal value from slideshare. Without context, slides are pretty useless. I'm not saying Yehuda's presentation wasn't good. I did not see his presentation. I am saying, the slides have little value without an explanation of the slides.
DarthMark 17y ago
So if you're new to rails, is it better to learn rails 2.x and move to 3.0 later, or to just learn 3.0 now?
- carbon8 17y ago
  2.3. The public API supposedly won't change much. There are a lot of internal changes that will make a lot of new things possible on the public side, but they have said they plan to support the existing Rails 2.3 public API in Rails 3.

65 points by r11t 17y ago

eob 17y ago

Every year I have this realization that I need to put a week aside and re-lean Rails because it changes so fast. But I'll take that any time over a framework that just atrophies.

cmelbye 17y ago

Rails 3 is going to be so cool. It looks like they're expanding on the features relating to Rack, which is going to open so many possibilities. Kudos to the Rails team!

tortilla 17y ago

Video: http://sdruby.org/video/075_rails3.m4v http://sdruby.org/video/075_rails3.m4v (366 MB)

moe 17y ago
The sound quality on that is.. unbearable.
- oomkiller 17y ago
  I second this! I also looked at the other video's SDRuby has up, and all of them I have tested are also horrible. If someone from SDRuby is here, FIX YOUR AUDIO!! It sounds like my dad's AM talk radio going through a tunnel!
  - moe 17y ago
    I would also like a fix. It sounds like someone simply encoded the video with way too strong audio-compression - the original material is probably fine. I'm very interested in the talk but it's near impossible to understand him and the warbling noise gives me instant-headache. No way for me to consume it as it is.
- alx 17y ago
  It seems it has been fixed, I watched it last week and recheck it today, far easier to understand.
Timothee 17y ago
I suppose this is what should have been submitted, because the slides are pretty dense...
- emmett 17y ago
  I hate video, and don't mind slides. I prefer the submitted form.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]

SlyShy 17y ago

I have to say, this looks like a major step up. The performance benchmarks are very impressive on their own, so that Rails 3 is also more flexible and easy to configure is great.

tptacek 17y ago

Are these benchmarks for real? Is there a 1.8.6 vs 1.9 thing happening here?

seregine 17y ago
you saw that they're in microseconds, right?
tptacek 17y ago
(to answer my own question: yes, there's a 1.9 thing happening here).

fizx 17y ago

The thing that excites me most is that Rails is moving to jQuery with "unobtrusive javascript" for all of the ajax helpers. Currently, its Prototype with inline spaghetti code.

rykov 17y ago

Most excited about the new router - doing subdomain and custom domain support is a hack in Rails 2.3

chriseppstein 17y ago

Looks like an awesome web framework. Rails blew my mind when I first learned it, but over the course of the last two years the various warts and inconsistencies have become apparent. I look forward to learning this new web framework that is also called ruby on rails ;-)

Maciek416 17y ago
That's how I've felt about it too. Back when it came out, Rails was very easy to fit into your brain in the course of a day or two of absorption, but now it's a very large collection of ideas, DSLs and overall lingo. It's probably more than a little bit overwhelming to newcomers, and even some of those of us who come back to it every year and scratch our heads in awe at just how big the Rails universe has become. I also hope that Rails 3 will cut down some of the noise for newbies and oldies alike.
- patio11 17y ago
  The thing I like about Rails is, unlike some technology stacks I could name (why hello there Enterprise Java), you don't have to know it all on day one. The first version of my site was an awful lot like Baby's First Bookstore, Rails 2007 Edition. It has gradually accumulated more features and sophistication as I've grown as a web programmer. A lot of the complexity in Rails is hidden until you need it. If you don't understand Rails caching yet, that's no problem, you don't have to understand it until you actually have to use it. Ditto the more advanced ActiveRecord tricks like named_scope, or the deep rabbit holes in the general vicinity of templating engines.
  - gvb 17y ago
    The term I like (don't know where I picked it up) is "discoverable." The simple things are easy, but you can discover over time how to do the complex things. This has two benefits: the obvious benefit is that it allows the user to be productive immediately, without training, without having to memorize a manual. The "hidden" benefit is that the program becomes an adventure game... it continues to surprise, delight, and reward the user long after the excitement of the initial purchase has faded. IMHO, this is Apple's "secret sauce." Their hardware and software is just hardware and software, it can be mimicked. The thing that sets their hw/sw apart is its discoverability, and that is very, very hard to copy because it is a thought process, a concept, a zen. Jason Fried makes this point in SvN: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us-or-anyone-else http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us... (with a recursive reference to HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 :-).

gfodor 17y ago

Looks really cool. It's definitely not cool though that Yehuda's keeps saying things like "Sinatra has failed because...", and "because Prototype sucks..." and so on. I'm only half way through the video, but it really bothers me when smart software developers disparage other open source projects that came before the latest shiny framework or tool. Especially when it's to brag about whatever project it is that they're currently working on. It's childish, rude, and basically makes you look like a dick no matter how whiz bang cool or better what you're currently working on actually is. Some day, Rails 3.0 will be old news and I'm sure he won't appreciate it when some young kid gets on stage saying "Rails 3.0 sucked, how could they have been so stupid?! Look how much better my code is!" Give credit where credit is due -- and remember we all stand on the shoulders of giants, show a little respect, eh?

ilaksh 17y ago
Some day, code will be old news and I'm sure you people won't appreciate it when some young kid gets on stage saying "textual non-interactive computer code sucked, how could they have been so stupid?".
techiferous 17y ago
> It's definitely not cool though that Yehuda's keeps saying things like "Sinatra has failed because..." Agreed. That's apples and oranges! Rails and Sinatra are different tools for different problems, IMO.
- freetard 17y ago
  > That's apples and oranges! Rails and Sinatra are different tools for different problems, IMO. Actually no. With rails3, rails will just be a meta gem. If you install rails-core you'll get something like Rack plus not much more which is basically what sinatra is.
  - techiferous 17y ago
    Ah, looks like I have some Rails 3 learnin' to do! Thanks! :)

ilaksh 17y ago

Rails 3 is waayy faster and better then. Rails in general is great. Its really got the abstraction thing and taking into consideration crazy things like developments in software engineering practices and programming languages. Having said that, I don't really know much about Rails. This comment is not about Rails. I just have to tell people because I keep thinking about something and almost no one seems to get it and realistically I am probably never going to follow through with it so if I can't communicate this idea it might not go anywhere. And with all of the positive progressive things Rails developers are doing, maybe, just maybe someone reading this will get what I am talking about. Basically, I keep thinking, especially just now when I was looking at that Rails code in his slides, the way everything is so well abstracted and so _structured_, and how he keeps going to the model with the circles connecting, and how we keep repeating keywords all over the place, and how no one ever wants to look at unsyntaxhighlighted code anymore, I have to say _again_, one-dimensional non-interactive (or two dimensional if you insist on calling it that) textual representations of software are outdated and unnecessary now. Sure, we do still have to type a lot of text in, and I am not trying to throw out my keyboard, or stop thinking or something. But there just really isn't any reason we have to be limited to text on a daily basis anymore. People just have a cognitive bias towards the status quo which is preventing them from taking the step to add a layer of two-dimensional widgets or something over the code. I am talking about code generating widgets, or intentional software, or a generic interactive graphical representation for function calls, control flow, model development. Things like that. Because basically a lot of code, even the things that involve a lot of abstractions with embedded textual mini-languages in them, are mostly mapping from one thing to another. Doing transformations on structures. Code-completion is a start, but what we really want are more useful iteractions with the models and algorithms. The way forward is things like code generation, projectional editing, live coding, dynamic evaluation and representation (widgets) etc. Anything that provides more interactivity to the software development process is where we should be going. And the next big step is to get out of the limitation of using textual code as the default editing level. Often times we are basically configuring/connecting functions/components, editing models, or using text to generate two dimensional features like tables/grids, UI forms, sometimes mathematical functions, or dynamic systems that we really need to interact with at runtime with dynamic graphical editors to manipulate and comprehend properly. So we should start on the two-dimensional, graphical level. Also, downloading open source projects whose claim to fame is completeness and ease of integration and then reading documentation which amounts to what commands to enter on the command line and then cutting and pasting and editing configuration text files in terminal windows is not cutting it anymore. There are these things called (graphical?) components. We can accomplish this with things like projectional editors, or even more simply by interacting with widgets that generate code. And yes, I know what LabView is, and no, that tool and other attempts at visual programming systems haven't proven anything. Its just hard to get these types of tools to be as generic as text-only systems, especially fully integrating keyboard and text use, AND, the number one hindrance, I believe, is status quo bias like loss aversion.

ilaksh 17y ago

When is Rails 3 going to be released and where do I download the current (unstable?) Rails 3 version?

rads 17y ago
The latest Rails is at GitHub: http://github.com/rails/rails/ http://github.com/rails/rails/ As for the release date: "[T]he Rails 3 release date will likely be in the first quarter of 2010, or even before Christmas 09 if things go really well." (http://railsnotes.com/745-rails-3-release-date-news/ http://railsnotes.com/745-rails-3-release-date-news/)
- jpcx01 17y ago
  Alpha release maybe. I'd estimate at least 6 months between the first alpha release and the final. Yehuda's been pretty clear that he wants all the plugins to be updated and working with the new public api before they go final on 3.0

riso 17y ago

I have always liked how Merb was structured. With Rails 3 is there any reason to use Merb for new projects?

hexis 17y ago
No, Rails 3 is also Merb 2. http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/ http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/

mrinterweb 17y ago

Am I the only one who perceives minimal value from slideshare. Without context, slides are pretty useless. I'm not saying Yehuda's presentation wasn't good. I did not see his presentation. I am saying, the slides have little value without an explanation of the slides.

DarthMark 17y ago

So if you're new to rails, is it better to learn rails 2.x and move to 3.0 later, or to just learn 3.0 now?

carbon8 17y ago
2.3. The public API supposedly won't change much. There are a lot of internal changes that will make a lot of new things possible on the public side, but they have said they plan to support the existing Rails 2.3 public API in Rails 3.