Personally, I’m a fan of Ruby on Rails and much of the 37signals approach to building software.
Last week, DHH tweeted something I liked:
He’s right, too. Programmers are some of the most opinionated people I know.
Just in case you’re not up on it, Rails receives some criticism because of its whole convention-over-configuration philosophy. Lots of people claim they dislike it because there’s too much “magic” going on behind-the-scenes.
The longer I build software for others, the more I care about getting something to the users faster than I do figuring out how every little nuance of the environment works. This isn’t to say that it’s not important, but that it’s secondary to my obligation to others.
There are a number of things that I use in my daily life that I don’t fully understand how they all work. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested or that I don’t care, but if I took the time to understand the in-and-outs of everything, I’d never get anything done.
Besides, there’s always enough time to dig deeper into details a little bit later.
RevRod says
As a developer, I was shocked when introduced to Ruby on Rails. What do you mean “Don’t worry about all the scaffolding for the database; RoR handles it.”? The more I got into it, the more I saw how this is really the fastest way to develop and deploy a web-based solution.
My only concern now is the on-going maintenance of the solution. Unlike something done in PHP, ASP, .NET, CFM or Flash, I have a very small pool of local resources I can depend on in a pinch.
Not too concerned about the ‘magic’ side; back in the day (’70s & ’80s), I used to be a Lvl 35 Magic-User.
Tom says
On top of that, MVC totally fits my mental model of a how a web application is assembled.
Maintenance is a tough spot. You’re right. For the small number of apps I’ve built with the framework, I’m the whole team =T.
And I’m definitely not saying not to dig under the hood, but it’s not the most important thing, you know? Everything we do with development these days is at some level of abstraction.
Andre Barnes says
Tim you mentioned “Everything we do with development these days is at some level of abstraction.” Very good point.
Tom says
Yeah and I’m definitely glad for that 😉