Well... how happy I am about this is purely a matter of seeing how things pan out. Merging with Rails = lots of developers and a bigger user community. This generally equates to more and better documentation, more general acceptance, more choices for hosting and easier job opportunities. There is a reason PHP flourished and continues to do so. Weee!
It also means extended bureaucracy and in general, it's harder for a single vision (which is often a good thing) to do its thing. I've really been impressed by Merb's core team and their goals and vision. When I saw Yehunda was also a part of jQuery (something a discovered about a year ago) I was excited because I loved jQuery's philosophy. I'm worried that this is going to eventually get trampled under the weight of the Rails community. However, I also trust that the core team has good reasons for doing this and wouldn't make the merge if it were to merely produce an incrementally different version of Rails versus a radically different version. We'll see I guess. I suppose you could say I'm cautiously optimistic. What I'm most curious about are the codebases. Is Merb itself becoming the foundation of Rails 3.0 or are the Merb guys bringing the Merb philosophy to the existing Rails codebase? I've seen forks become the new standard or get merged back into the original project, but wasn't ever a fork, was it? If this is pulled off well, it'll be huge since it'll disarm one of the primary attacks on Ruby and the web—performance and scalability. I'll also be too happy to see all this hit with Ruby 1.9 (the unicode improvements are HUGE for the work that I do). I'm really hoping the next few years see a large increase in Ruby usage. I actually figured something like this would happen. Either Merb would eventually eclipse Rails or the two would merge. And, for those worried about competition... there are always forks. This IS open source, after all. If Rails 3.0 becomes a dog, another project will rise to meet demands if there are a sufficient enough number of them. I'll be happy as long as Merb continues to at least get bug fixes and the time I spend with Merb (I'll still be using it AT LEAST until Rails 3.0 is upon us) isn't wasted should I choose to make the transition to Rails 3.0. On Dec 23, 3:16 pm, Zack Ham <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. 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