Ruby on Rails featured in Computer

Will Software Developers Ride Ruby on Rails to Success? in the February 2006 issue of Computer from IEEE.

It seems like a big deal to be featured in Computer. Computer usually features technology that have had a profound effect on the industry, in other words, mostly Java and C++. So, the fact that they decided to do an article on Ruby on Rails means that somehow the industry is becoming aware that there exists other frameworks out there besides the heavyweight Java frameworks.

Anyway, the article is rather objective and does not contain all the hype that usually surrounds Ruby on Rails. This is both good and bad. It's good because it will not sound like a marketing scheme and astute readers might actually go and check it out. It's bad because it does not really do justice to what Rails has to offer over the other frameworks. The author chooses to focus on two aspects of the Ruby on Rails design principle: convention-over-configuration and don't-repeat-yourself-principle. I thought a concrete example would have been nice but it already spans 3 pages so an example might not be feasible.

True, Rails may not be a superscalar framework. But for most purposes, it gives developers a new lightweight system that probably will scale fine even if you take it up to its limits. It's definitely easier than having to implement a multi-tier Java application and the author makes it a point to present that in the article.