Rails is a step.
Disclaimer: I do not hate Rails, wish death upon Rails, or think Rails is “stupid”.
Frameworks are awesome. They offer a developer many perks, such as greater productivity, rapid development, and improved scalability. One of the more influential frameworks in the past couple of years is Ruby on Rails. As a company, MB has used Rails in a handful of projects to varying levels of success. Recently, though, I’ve had a growing concern about the Rails community, and it’s nearing the point of frustration. Let me explain.
First, some backstory. I first heard about Rails in the summer of ‘06. At the time, I was working as a developer for a local marketing company. Most of the apps I wrote were written in PHP, and I had constructed a simple framework to assist with my job. So, I followed Rails from a distance for a few months, at times even taking what I learned from Rails and applying it to my own framework.
In 2007 I made the decision to use Rails for a personal project. This particular project was simple in nature, requiring only a small number of models and controllers. Everything was groovy; the project came to a close and functioned fine, though it was never published. In late 2007, we began taking on our first Rails clients.
Our clients came to us with a lot of complex problems. These were real-world problems, dealing with gigabytes of data spread amongst several databases, with thousands of simultaneous users requesting and manipulating massive data sets through a web interface. To make a long story short, the “Rails Way” ended up not being the best way to solve the problems we faced.
OK, enough history and on to my point. There is a number of people in the Rails community who seem to believe that the “Rails Way” is the absolute best way to develop a web application. What’s more, an entire industry has sprung up around Rails, with companies offering to turn any idea into a web application powered by Rails. More and more developers are tying themselves to this one technology and, more specifically, a single approach to web application development.
Perhaps this is a misconception on my part (if you feel it is please let me know). I simply want to challenge developers to keep thinking, continue moving forward, and not become tied to any one way of development. After all, isn’t Rails just a single step in our journey towards the better development of web applications? Let’s not think of it as our destination.