Translating Geek Into English
In this edition…
JetBrains just released version 1 of a new Ruby and Ruby on Rails IDE called RubyMine. It features everything you’d expect in an IDE, like code completion, project navigation, HTML/CSS/JS editing, version control software (VCS) support, plus lots of Ruby and Rails-specific features. Version 1.1 of RubyMine is expected in May, with support for version 2.3 of Rails (a significant upgrade). The software is available under two licenses, one (free) for open-source projects and another commercial license ($99 US at the time of this writing).
A couple of months ago I started hearing about the Merb framework, an alternative to the Rails framework for creating Web sites in Ruby. As you may know, Rails came under some fire for not scaling well; Twitter, in particular, had several problems. (Although I would argue that the demands of a site like Twitter are probably in the top 0.1% of all sites, so this concern may not be an issue for most Web sites.) Version 2 of Rails specifically addressed these concerns, but still, people started to look around for alternatives, including not using Ruby at all. This is where Merb came in: a smaller and faster Ruby framework. I hadn’t yet gotten to play with Merb but was going to add it to my framework-comparison homework. That may be a moot point now, as it was just announced that Merb and Rails will work together on the next version of both frameworks. Version 3 of Rails will incorporate some of Merb’s best attributes, resulting in a better Ruby framework for Web development and ending a minor feud within the Ruby community. So the next version of Merb will be Rails 3.0 and the next version of Rails will be influenced by Merb: what does this mean? Continue Reading…
