Comments on: Rails Maintainers (and Users), Take a Hint!

By: uncle_jesse

uncle_jesse — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:49:37 +0000

Jonathan, those are some excellent points! I agree completely. I’d just love to see some evangelism on top of all that. I’m about to do a series on setting up a simple Catalyst app on here - hopefully I can help (although I am definitely not as smart as you guys!). I’m hoping to have money to make it out to Chicago this year - hopefully we can do another BOF session out there!

By: uncle_jesse

uncle_jesse — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:49:37 +0000

Jonathan, those are some excellent points! I agree completely. I'd just love to see some evangelism on top of all that. I'm about to do a series on setting up a simple Catalyst app on here - hopefully I can help (although I am definitely not as smart as you guys!). I'm hoping to have money to make it out to Chicago this year - hopefully we can do another BOF session out there!

By: Jonathan Rockway

Jonathan Rockway — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 07:49:37 +0000

One of the problems that Catalyst suffers from is its flexibility. It’s good at handling the “boring” complicated applications that make us programmers lots of money, but it’s not so good about being exciting given a 10 minute screencast or demo. People tend to get more excited about flashy HTML than they do about maintainable app internals, so I think this is working against Catalyst. (Still, we have tons and tons of users… but they’re all so busy making money that they don’t have much time to hype it up.)

I’m not sure about this, but it seems that the target demographic of Rails and Catalyst are a bit different, so maybe we’re not really competing. Rails users want a quick-n-flashy app that works well enough, Catalyst users want a solid system for doing their own thing. TMTOWTDI, after all.

By: Jonathan Rockway

Jonathan Rockway — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 07:49:37 +0000

One of the problems that Catalyst suffers from is its flexibility. It's good at handling the “boring” complicated applications that make us programmers lots of money, but it's not so good about being exciting given a 10 minute screencast or demo. People tend to get more excited about flashy HTML than they do about maintainable app internals, so I think this is working against Catalyst. (Still, we have tons and tons of users… but they're all so busy making money that they don't have much time to hype it up.)

I'm not sure about this, but it seems that the target demographic of Rails and Catalyst are a bit different, so maybe we're not really competing. Rails users want a quick-n-flashy app that works well enough, Catalyst users want a solid system for doing their own thing. TMTOWTDI, after all.

By: Openwookie

Openwookie — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:16:05 +0000

Now you’re claiming that no one with any experience hacks on Rails? And your example isn’t someone who actually hacks on Catalyst, but on Perl modules? Wow, now who’s the fanboi?.

It may surprise you, but there are plenty of experienced developers/engineering types writing ruby (and rails) code! Amazing, huh? Another amazing fact is that there half-baked former php’rs writing Perl code too! There just isn’t quite as many of them since Perl hasn’t been the ‘cool new thing’ for quite some time.

By: Openwookie

Openwookie — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:16:05 +0000

Now you're claiming that no one with any experience hacks on Rails? And your example isn't someone who actually hacks on Catalyst, but on Perl modules? Wow, now who's the fanboi?.

It may surprise you, but there are plenty of experienced developers/engineering types writing ruby (and rails) code! Amazing, huh? Another amazing fact is that there half-baked former php'rs writing Perl code too! There just isn't quite as many of them since Perl hasn't been the 'cool new thing' for quite some time.

By: Andy Lester

Andy Lester — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:14:26 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. I’m not sure I’m a computer scientist, but I do like to get stuff done. One thing I now need to get done: Update my O’Reilly bio since I’m no longer at Socialtext.

By: Andy Lester

Andy Lester — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:14:26 +0000

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not sure I'm a computer scientist, but I do like to get stuff done. One thing I now need to get done: Update my O'Reilly bio since I'm no longer at Socialtext.