From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2004-08-31T05:02:35+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Suggesting Options

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 05:55:30 +0900, Charles Comstock wrote
> I just wanted to complement you for taking the very honorable route 
> of suggesting both your frameworks and various competing frameworks. 
>  It makes the community much more friendly and acknowledges that 
> each of the frameworks have their own merits.  Too often people 
> decry the other options in software projects, and turn them all into 
> religious wars.  I guess it's because to a certain extent each of 
> the projects that people use represent how they think about problems 
> and thus I can see why they get so protective of there mindshare.  
> But it's very refreshing to see someone acknowledge each side, 
> particularly when one of the projects is there own.  Keep it up, and 
> hopefully more will follow in your path :)

Thanks.  I think that the point that you bring up, that the projects that 
people use represent how they think about problems, is why I try to bring up 
some of the alternatives whenever someone posts something where I could just 
say, "Use Iowa!"

Iowa and Rails and CGIkit and Kwartz and Narf-lib and SWS are all different 
approachs to the same basic challenge.  Some share more overlap in intention 
or implementation than others.  Some have better docs than others or more 
active support, but each of the approaches is valid and fits someone's way 
of thinking well.  So it's nice to keep the names circulating as that keeps 
people looking at different things and thinking about these issues, and we 
can all benefit from some cross polination and maybe, like was mentioned in 
the Webshare thread, even some actual working together (gasp!).  I have no 
shame in admiting that I have gotten inspiration for some things that are in 
Iowa from DHH's work on Rails as well as from other packages out there, and 
although I'd certainly be happy to gain attention and hopefully business by 
having no competition out there, competition helps fuel support and 
innovation, and that is a good thing in the end.

One of my projects that I just haven't been able to put aside enough time 
for, yet, is to put together some reference pages a bit like the templating 
frameworks wiki page at rubygarden, but focusing on my impression of the 
packages that are in current active use or development, and giving some very 
brief examples followed by links to more information.  I want to do this 
because I think that if there are some more people who play with Iowa, I can 
get some more users, but also because even if *I* don't get a new user, 
someone who is looking for "the" framework to use that will let them do 
their next project in Ruby instead of in PHP or Perl might find another Ruby 
framework that fits their idea of perfect.  And if I can schedule a little 
time once the pages are created to maintain them once in a while, they could 
be a fantastic one stop shopping center for people looking for the current 
state of the world when it comes to Ruby and web development or Ruby and ORM 
packages.

Ah, my kingdom for an unpaid intern!  :)


Kirk Haines