From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-12-28T03:40:28+09:00
Subject: Re: The Expert Ruby Programmer

On Dec 27, 2005, at 12:01 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

> I have a big problem with a few sentences in the preceding URL. Or  
> at least as
> I understand them. They seem to be advocating getting rid of config  
> files and
> putting all logic in code, at least my reading of the following  
> quotes:

One of the design points of Rails is, "Convention over  
configuration."  That means that as long as you do everything the  
Rails way, it can make a lot of assumptions about what you are  
building and properly configure itself for you.  You can "correct"  
the framework here and there, if it makes a wrong guess, but  
generally it saves a good deal of work.

Despite this, a Rails application does have configuration files.   
They just happen to be written in pure Ruby, which, in my opinion, is  
more agile than XML.  You can easily add new application based  
configuration.

Walk through a couple of Rails tutorials and you'll understand the  
lines you quoted a little better.  It's not a cure-all (Rails  
struggles a bit with legacy systems, for example), but it can save a  
lot of repetition in many cases.

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II