mod rails was released recently (I submitted a voice sample to narrate the demo screencast, but they went with the über-helpful Ryan Bates), giving hope to not-big-enough-to-require-a-dedicated-server Rails developers everywhere. Deployment has long been the biggest complaint against Rails, and hopefully this gem will facilitate getting Rails apps up and running on servers everywhere.
Not everyone is happy, mind you. What’s the complaint? That now Rails may be too easy to deploy. And once something becomes easy, then it is put into the hands of those who may not know what they’re doing. Then newbies come out of the woodwork to ask the questions that serious and seasoned developers have known for years. Before you know it, everyone is using Rails and the old-timers just aren’t as special anymore.
I’ve read some Ruby purists who complain that Rails has polluted the Ruby user pool. What was formerly a niche language has now entered the mainstream, pulling ignorance behind it. Now a few Rails developers are raising the same concerns (Of course, since there’s been a Rails for Dummies book for over a year, it seems to me Rails entered the mainstream a while ago).
The best part about PHP is that you can host it cheaply just about anywhere and don’t need a CS degree to create a basic dynamic site. The worst part about PHP is that you can host it cheaply just about anywhere and don’t need a CS degree to create a basic dynamic site. Fortunately Ruby has many advantages over PHP, and I don’t think the user community will be ‘polluted’ as much.
So what is it? Do you want easy deployment, broader exposure, and all that brings or do you want a niche language?
I, for one, welcome our new Rails underlords (or newbies).