From: Stephen Kellett Date: 2005-06-16T18:10:32+09:00 Subject: Ruby on Rails is a powerhouse, so says JavaLobby I got the regular email from JavaLobby today. Don't read it much, but the email title was "Ruby on Rails is a powerhouse". The text relating to it was: Rick Ross, JavaLobby Founder Ruby on Rails is a powerhouse I didn't get to spend much time at the No Fluff Just Stuff symposium here in Research Triangle Park this past weekend, but one noteworthy session I did get to attend was Dave Thomas' presentation about "Ruby on Rails." I was amazed as I sat through the 90-minute presentation watching Dave knock out feature after feature of a real-life web application in record time and with more compact code than any I had previously seen. The Rails developers seem to have carefully considered the recurring pattern needs of web apps, and the framework provides full functionality for a typical database-backed CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application in a matter of minutes. Rails uses intelligent reflection to map database tables to Ruby objects, and the apps you generate with the Rails scripts form a very reasonable foundation for extending and customizing to meet your specific needs. Unit testing is built-in by default, as is a full web server for testing and debugging. The next time you need to get the job done very quickly you may want to try out Ruby on Rails for yourself. I don't know enough yet to say how much it can scale, but Rails is quite clearly a major step forward for those who want web application development to be easier. Dave has a new book in beta, check it out here. Also if you go to http://www.javalobby.org/articles/nfjs/ and then to the bottom of the page (Sunday – May 22, 2005), some nice comments about Dave's presentations at No Fluff Just Stuff. -- Stephen Kellett Object Media Limited http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/software.html Computer Consultancy, Software Development Windows C++, Java, Assembler, Performance Analysis, Troubleshooting