Two things: 1.
The ruby equivalent of this is called ERB. (It put the "erb" in Merb) Using passanger, you can write ERB "apps" this way. They'll suck in much the same way that PHP has no implicit structure, but you *can* do it. Or, if your needs are simple, use the flat structured merb app! After a while, as things get a little more complex, you'll find yourself hankering for some kind of common structure to your "apps", (code maintainability gains from this are enormous) and you'll start to find that structuring them according to commonly accepted patterns is a good thing. These pattern sets are what we call Frameworks. To be honest with you, there's hardly any point starting in a framework if you don't already know the pain and suffering of doing at least ONE app with your own structure, and then having to maintain it, say, three months later. It's possible to appreciate this by looking at PHP code, but you really don't know the value of a framework until you've spent some time trying to manage your own code. Us people who have been around while the web framworks have been really gaining traction have had a distinct advantage that newcomers will not have, and that is that we've all tried to roll our own frameworks to make our jobs easier TO A DEGREE. This means we value the frustration that frameworks like Merb and Rails DON'T give us. Newbies need to find this realisation somehow else. 2. Low barrier to programming? Are you serious? In order to do *anything* useful, the programmer will have to understand client/server architecture, what a web page is, networking (to some degree), some form of coding, and other stuff. Granted these are fairly ubiquitous these days, but still I find that approach ridiculous. The lowest entry barrier to programming is having a friend with a Commodore 64, or other such ROM-based language machine. You turn it on, you're in BASIC. That's low-entry! The modern day equivalent is OS/X in my opinion. You turn it on, open up the "terminal" app and type IRB and you get an interactive ruby console. This is why Ruby is great. People learn best by making mistakes, and using IRB, you can eval any bit of ruby to test it out (ie make a small mistake yourself) and this is invaluable. This is only ONE reason. It's not our job to convince you of this value, but if you're interested and you want to learn, we can definitely help you to find your path in the framework world. Frameworks really aren't very useful for people who don't see the value in them (like EVERYTHING), therefore if you don't see the value in them, don't use them... until you DO see the value in them... :-) Julian. On 16/11/2008, at 11:20 PM, weepy wrote: > > While I mostly agree with you, I was less talking about PHP as a > language, but more the framework around which it is used. > > Consider the approach: > > 1) Take a standard HTML page > 2) Modify it to include some simple PHP (e.g. <%= $myvar %>) > 3) Rename the file to .php > 4) Upload page. > > That's about as low a barrier to entry for a non-programmer as I can > think of. > > weepy > > > > > On 16 Nov, 10:54, Julian Leviston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> IMHO basic PHP is very hard to understand, not easy. >> >> Then again, I'm biased... because I think most programming is hard to >> understand, and awfully suckful. Unfortunately, it's all we have at >> the moment. >> >> PHP is easy to understand if you've done some C, which isn't terribly >> easy to understand if you've done NO programming. >> >> Ruby is easy to understand if you've done some smalltalk. >> >> IMHO, smalltalk (and Objective C, and also Ruby) is easier to >> understand than C in terms of powerful code that actually does >> something. >> >> IMHO, Ruby and Smalltalk are FAR easier to understand as first >> languages. >> >> The easiest way to prototype things is modification of template code >> in-place, or generators (they're somewhat equivalent), in my opinion. >> >> Just my two cents worth. >> >> Julian. >> >> On 16/11/2008, at 9:48 PM, weepy wrote: >> >> >> >>> I was reading about your future plans for Merb 1.x >> >>> In particular I was interested about the idea of rapid/easy >>> prototyping and what ideas you had there. >> >>> Ideas that spring to my mind: >> >>> * similarities between very-flat and Sinatra/Camping >>> * basic PHP is very easy to understand and deploy. >>> * similarities between ERB and PHP. >> >>> Interested to see what else you have in mind ! >> >>> weepy > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "merb" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/merb?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
