Ruby on Rails "radical simplicity"

David Heinemeier Hansson, has built a "framework" to help Web developers be more productive and has released the package of tools through an open-source project.

His software, Ruby on Rails, only out for a little more than a year, has started a buzz among the legions of developers and high-level executives that track the trend-driven woHansson's quest to build a practical and productive Web development framework demonstrates how a single person can shake up the status quo, even in a development world where a few companies dominate.

The trick, said Hansson, is to "slaughter the holy cows," the well-understood ideas of computer science that dictate how programmers work. In many cases, software vendors design products for difficult problems, an approach that leads to excess complexity, he said.

His goal with Ruby on Rails is not to create a sophisticated development framework that the engineers at Google or Amazon.com will flock to. Instead, he has focused on creating templates and designs that tackle the unglamorous problems, such as making database modifications, that the great majority of Web developers face every day.

"The major delusion I want to shatter is that you can successfully use the same types and tools for solving the biggest problems in the world and have a pleasant time applying that to solving the normal problems of the world," Hansson said.
Ruby on Rails is not used nearly as much as other Web tools such as PHP, Java or Microsoft tools. But it has caught the attention of some of the influential programmers who help popularize new products.

David Geary, who has authored books on Java and sits on the technical committee for the latest Java Web programming model, has found that Ruby on Rails is five to 10 times faster than comparable Java frameworks. Like Java did a decade ago, Ruby on Rails is getting developers excited by making them more productive, he said.

"No other alternative in enterprise computing has nearly as much mindshare as Rails," Geary wrote in a blog posting. "Will Rails hit a tipping point and become widely adopted in the near future? I am certain of it."

The vision of Ruby on Rails, or RoR, is to combine the speed and ease-of-use of scripting language PHP with the "clean," structured approach of Java, Hansson explained. That combination makes code quick to write and easy to maintain over time, he said.
"We're trying to fuse those two extremes and be quick and clean," Hansson said. PHP applications are difficult to maintain, while Java Enterprise Edition software is a "complex monstrosity" that's hard to learn, he said.

There is currently one book on Ruby on Rails, but seven or eight are being written now. The first conference of Ruby developers last year had 60 people; this year there were about 200, the majority of whom were doing commercial development, Hansson said. He predicts 800 attendees will be at next year's conference.

The interest in Ruby on Rails is fueled in part by a larger trend toward scripting languages that aim to replace Java or Microsoft's C# language. Scripting, or "dynamic," languages such as Python, PHP and Ruby are simpler to learn, according to analysts and developers.
Research company Burton Group recommends that corporate customers consider Ruby on Rails for new Web development projects. The tool set is particularly useful for "Web 2.0-style" applications that may be hosted, said Burton Group analyst Richard Monson-Haefel. Ruby on Rails allows developers to build interactive Web pages using the AJAX set of development techniques.

But because Ruby on Rails takes some unconventional approaches, notably in databases, it does have some limitations, he said. "It's really only practical in cases where you have complete control over the database schema or you're doing a new 'green field' application," Monson-Haefel said.