Why Rails is total overkill and why I love Rack:
That’s why Rails is overkill: You can easily build web applications without the “magic”, and without the interdependencies and all the rest that comes with it.
This may be the case, but if it weren’t for Rails providing the exact methodology for programmers to use and making site development rapid and effective, chances are there wouldn’t be any other Ruby web frameworks (or antiframeworks).
2 Comments
I’d like to point out that there were other frameworks for Ruby before Rails, and people writing web apps with Ruby before Rails. Rails popularized Ruby to a lot of people that might not otherwise have used it, sure, and it deserves credit for that.
But there are many Ruby users, me included, who have done years of web development in other languages and who started with Ruby long before Rails started mattering to anybody.
Many of us never got on the Rails bandwagon exactly because we’ve seen the hype machine for [insert new web development paradigm here] before, for other languages, many times over.
Point well taken, Vidar. I was on the Rails bandwagon for far longer than I should have been simply because I didn’t know the alternatives. Once I looked around, however, I almost universally enjoyed the alternatives to Rails. Thanks for visiting!