From: Sascha Ebach <se@...>
Date: 2004-08-20T07:24:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby's Killer App - every language has one

Ruby Script wrote:
> Which ruby app is so compelling that people who don't even intend on 
> programming ruby are willing to install it?
> For Python, there's SCons and a few others.
> 
> What are some possible apps we can create in Ruby that will be OUR 
> community's killer app?

It would be an app that is of use not only to programmers. I am thinking 
of a cms with the functionality of drupal/ezpublish (php) for example. 
Some app that would make lots of ppl want to install and use it and also 
make many developers want to extend and customize it to their needs.

> A modern ViewCVS perhaps?  A cross-platform package manager that unites 
> win32, linux and *bsd?  What is realistic, much-needed and compelling 
> that we can produce within 12 months?

Something like that could be moderately successful, but IMO something 
like I mentioned above will be uncomparably more successful. Tools for 
developers are nice, but if you want to boost the popularity of a 
language you really have to develop something that is very mainstream 
and better yet that developers can earn money from offering support 
services and the like.

I don't think that such a cms would take 12 months to do. Not for a 
first usable version I think. And, it would probably be doable in a 
third of the amount of code as in many other languages.

That is why I started such a project. I am in planning / prototyping 
stage, so there is not any code to share, yet. I am hoping to go open 
source with this by the end of the year. We will see. I am suspecting 
that other ppl are (at least) planning to do something similiar. It 
would be nice to talk to those ppl. Maybe we need a wiki called Project 
"RubyCMS". What is funny, if you look at all the solutions written in 
php/java/python and what not, that there is not _one_ such package for 
Ruby. Someone besides me _must_ be planning such a thing...

I will be using Rails for it since it simply is the best framework 
around for this kind of job in terms of documentation and ease of use. 
(Thanks David)

-- 
Sascha Ebach