From: "Michael C. Libby" <mcl-ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-01-14T22:20:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Proliferation of web frameworks

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 08:49:54PM +0900, PA wrote:
> 
> On Jan 14, 2005, at 12:42, Michael Neumann wrote:
> 
> >Often it's easier to write a new application from scratch then 
> >understand an existing one. By writing Wee from scratch, I learned 
> >*why* Avi (who wrote both IOWA and Seaside/Borges) did the things in 
> >this way. I used Avi's ideas and implemented them in Ruby how I'd 
> >implement them.
> 
> Beside "writing your own" as a learning experience, another thing not 
> to underestimate is the ludic aspect of all this. A lot of open source 
> project are simply for fun, not for profit nor "efficiency".
> 
> Sometime, even though there already exists uncountable "solutions" out 
> there, I just feel like writing my own as a hobbyist. Just because I 
> can :o)

Seems to me that web sites are often highly customized animals, as well.

Might make less sense trying to fit the design into an existing framework
than it does to just build something that does exactly what is needed for
the case at hand.

Part of the problem we have with Ruby is that writing new code that is 
fairly powerful is very, very easy. This is a good problem to have. :)

Of course, this also means that it might be easier to simply code from
scratch than figure out how to extend existing complex code. With Ruby
this is less of a problem than some languages, but big projects are 
still big projects... and that can be intimidating (at least to me).

I also want to suggest that the names chosen for most of these projects
aren't particularly helpful, nor are the descriptions. This means that 
people like me, who tend to get glazed eyes fast when anything that 
looks even remotely buzzword compliant or marketing-flashy comes along,
may miss a perfectly useful package simply because it has a "wierd" name
or the description is too vague. I'm sure this is just prejudice on
my part, but I tend to avoid stuff that comes across like an ad in 
Dr. Dobbs for the latest Java gizmo or the newest .NET snake oil.

Is it possible the names make people think of a package as someone's pet
project rather than a community resource to be hacked and extended?

I'm certainly NOT trying to disparage any of the efforts out there, 
because it's all volunteer work. Even if no one else ends up using
your package, just your willingness to share the code you've written
is worth applauding. In that respect, keep up the good work you 
proliferators of frameworks. :)

 -Michael