For better or worse Jon I think web development has always been a fast moving target. It seems we are always targeting compliance with evolving and unimplemented standards. We are continually pushing the capabilities of browsers. We are taking a medium that many of us remember as being basically documents with links, and turning it into a thin-client application runtime environment. It is crazy and that is not changing. I agree with you though, and hope that this merge is handled with careful deliberation, as it could have a variety of outcomes and I truly do hope for the best.
- Zack On Dec 23, 2008, at 2:56 PM, Jon Hancock wrote: > > a few minutes ago I finished my rewrite of shellshadow in merb > 1.0.6.1. This took on and off a few months as merb 1.0 was in flux. > Its late (6am in Shanghai), I'm very tired, I haven't finished my > Christmas shopping yet, but I checked the merb google group before > going to bed. I see this merger announcement. > ok, fine. I'll have to sleep on it and then I guess I'll wait a few > months to see what happens. > > But what I went through: > 2007: launched shellshadow in rails 1.2.3. I was very unhappy with > the experience (read below to see why I had some insight into > frameworks) > 2008 - April: re-launched with a rewrite of shellshadow in merb 0.9.2 > + datamapper 0.2.5 > 2008 - December: re-launch shellshadow rewrite in merb 1.0 + dm 0.9.8 > > Do you know how tired I am of following the framework curve? Let me > explain... > > I wrote the world's first ORM in smalltalk in 1988. From then through > the early 90s I wrote and re-wrote several frameworks until I evolved > a "full-stack". > In '94, I wrote the world's first full-stack app framework, > "patternWare", in Smalltalk. > I re-wrote patternWare in Java starting in '98 - 400,000 lines of Java > code, an ORB, the whole frickin' kitchen sink. I eschewed and blew by > the promise of J2EE. Yes, it was DRY, and all the other goodness the > ruby worlds thinks it invented. Well, ok, the smalltalk stuff was > much DRY-er than the Java ;) > The above frameworks were used by many Fortune 100 companies. Big > honkin' enterprise apps that required a mature easy to use framework > that could be taught to old-school COBOL programmers. F/OSS > principles didn't apply then. My customers didn't pay for beta code. > I literally spent a decade trying to explain to anyone that would > listen the importance of this thing I was calling an "application > framework". > > That all started 20 years ago...Now I'm tired. I'm too old to hack > away on frameworks. There are plenty of smart young people to do > this. I may have some value to add to this community. Maybe not. > But really I'm just tired and all I want to do is write a webapp that > has sound underpinnings. Due to the permissive nature of the web, > this requires frameworks. > > All I ask is for the community to take it easy. Do you really think > you can fix all the outstanding bugs in merb 1.0.x while putting such > an extraordinary effort into Rails 3? The answer is yes, given a long > enough timeline. But no, if you're too aggressive. > > Please try to take it easy on people, like me, who's main interest > these days is publishing a webapp, not following the edge. > Frameworks, like math, is a young man's sport. I've had my days of > existential scheming in the snow. > > thanks for your continued help and understanding. And thanks for > letting me have my little rant here ;) > My biggest fear about this merger is that I won't have such close > access to the people that make merb great. I feel the contact will be > drowned in a sea of Rails. > > take care and Merry Christmas to you all. > > - Jon > > On Dec 24, 4:55 am, Michael Klishin <[email protected]> > wrote: >> On 23.12.2008, at 23:46, Zack Ham wrote: >> >>> I really hope that merb's naming scheme wins out. >>> Application beats ApplicationController and before beats >>> before_filter. >> >> I personally think Rails convention will win simply because there is >> more code to change otherwise. But it does not look like a problem to >> me. >> There are much more important things like making ActiveSupport monkey >> patch less aggressive and perform better, make ORM finally pluggable, >> etc. >> >> MK > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
