IMHO, MacRuby and Merb are two of the most interesting current
developments in the Ruby arena. Because I've been looking at
both of them, I started noticing some similarities, including:
* Focus on design and engineering
In an age of "cowboy programming", I find it refreshing to
see that some programming projects actually embrace design
and engineering.
* large, well-documented APIs
In a community dominated by a web framework (Rails) that
has no defined API, I think this is quite noteworthy.
* MVC-based UI frameworks
Both MacRuby and Merb can both be used for purposes other
than interactive UI development (eg, batch-mode applications,
web services). However, their focus is on UI and both use an
MVC-based approach (though the specifics vary markedly).
Anyway, I started wondering whether any parts of Merb might be
useful for MacRuby to consider adopting. For example:
* Merb, like Rails, defines conventions for directory layout.
Would it make sense for MacRuby to have similar conventions?
* Merb stresses modularity very strongly, using gems to add
"plugins", "slices", etc. What kinds of modularity should
we encourage for MacRuby, HotCocoa, etc?
* Some of Merb's plugins add functionality (eg, DataMapper)
which might be useful in a MacRuby application. Would it
be useful for MacRuby to be able to use Merb plugins?
Comments solicited...
-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841
Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development
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