2006-07-02
Back from RailsConf
RailsConf 2006 was one concentrated dose of Ruby and Rails goodness. I went through my talk a bit faster than expected. If you are looking for the slides, they are posted over at Writertopia. I plan on writing a lengthy article based on the talk to flesh in many points I skipped or glossed over.
The Authorization plugin has been getting a lot of love for the last two weeks. I stupidly labelled the pre-RailsConf release as "1.0 release candidate 1." Now I'm hacking things up, adding lots of sugar, and maybe merging an outside contribution into the code base. The differences between the release candidates will be closer to version changes than simple code stabilization. Oh well. Better to hack and release than worry about looking like a fool...
My appreciation for the Rails testing framework has grown. Over the past two weeks, I've been mucking with the syntax and features of the Authorization plugin and, invariably, the code gets broken. When I've had a problem, it's usually because I was too lazy to write a test for an added feature. I'm learning my lesson. Rails integration testing rocks. I'm going to create test stories for Writertopia.
Things I'm pondering:
The Authorization plugin has been getting a lot of love for the last two weeks. I stupidly labelled the pre-RailsConf release as "1.0 release candidate 1." Now I'm hacking things up, adding lots of sugar, and maybe merging an outside contribution into the code base. The differences between the release candidates will be closer to version changes than simple code stabilization. Oh well. Better to hack and release than worry about looking like a fool...
My appreciation for the Rails testing framework has grown. Over the past two weeks, I've been mucking with the syntax and features of the Authorization plugin and, invariably, the code gets broken. When I've had a problem, it's usually because I was too lazy to write a test for an added feature. I'm learning my lesson. Rails integration testing rocks. I'm going to create test stories for Writertopia.
Things I'm pondering:
- CRUD and REST. Should I go this route in my next overhaul of Writertopia?
- The effort being devoted to simplifying Rails deployment. Ezra talked about Engine Yard. The folks at Textdrive have been talking up their Sun-centric distributed fault-tolerant system. And I'm also considering RailsMachine. I'd love to spend my time almost purely on web app development and general business issues.
- The interesting mix of "constraints are liberating" and "Ruby is all powerful" philosophies in Rails. On one hand, you want to have a powerful language to do all the tasks that need to be done. Need to communicate with C? That's possible. Need to build up toward a DSL? That's possible too. With Ruby, you can eval away, with all the potential danger that entails. Ruby gives you power that you can abuse. On the other hand, Rails tries to push you onto a Golden Path. Constraints are introduced by the framework, not the language. That's so much better than having constraints from top to bottom. (No languages & frameworks are mentioned to protect the innocent.)
