For about two years now, Rails has been in our lives. It has arrived sort of violently and with a lot of buzz. Some say it’s all bullsh**, others love it to death, just like with every new technology. Both sides have their points. But the important thing is, does Rails have a future?
Right from the beginning. Rails has been dismissed as a toy and bitched about, especially by the Java community. Is it fear? Is it ignorance? I’m not quite sure. Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore, because those voices got quieter over the last few months. And you don’t even have to look far to find some influences. Although Rails as a framework has its downsides (surprise!), it quickly influenced a lot of other frameworks, including Trails, Grails (I’d suggest finding new names), CakePHP or TurboGears.
Concerning the downsides, it seems that the first thing people looking for is negative things. Rails can’t do this, Rails can’t do that, you heard it. That’s an easy and comfortable way to do things. Pointing out the obvious is simple, suggesting an improvements or asking why it’s been done that way is another. Granted, David is quite picky about how things are done in Rails, but hey, you can always write a plugin. What I’d wish for are sayings like “Why isn’t this done that way, I/we could achieve <insert-some-cool-and-money-making-feature-here> if it were”, and not “I hate Rails, because it does xyz not the way <insert-some-other-framework-here>”. There’s always a reason, and granted, if it’s not implemented the way you like it, there are two possibilities, either you’re looking at things from a too technical point of view, or you just shut up and move on.
In technical terms Rails is still quite young, having reached v1.0 last summer. Does that mean anything? Probably not, since all technologies add up to what is Rails are only glued-together components that build up on existing knowledge and technology. That’s what surprises me. People bitch about it although it’s not really anything new. They use similar frameworks in their applications, be it Hibernate, WebWork, EJB and whatnot. Granted, Rails as it is has been a little over-hyped, for that matter. But in the end, it’s not ground-breaking news (which, of course, nobody said it would be ;).
So set aside all the good and the bad, the question still is, has Rails already reached its tipping point? Has hype become mainstream? From a technological point of view, I’d say yes. Rails as a combination of good practices and existing technologies (as in ways to do it, not frameworks) is definitely on the right side of the bell curve. The conservatives already have taken over what’s proven to work. But Rails as a framework is what I’d say still a tool for early adopters. I don’t mean that in a negative way. Rails is being adopted by more and more people, who are curios, or sick of other, more heavyweight ways to do web development. Some people already are convinced and do all their web development with Rails. Good on them! Others do it for fun (and maybe a little profit). For the time being I see myself as one of the latter.
The wide adoption of Rails is still to come, if at all. I’m not being negative here, but it’s a possibility that a new technology will never be adopted by a broader audience. Some would probably love to see Rails fall, others to see it rise to the tipping point. It’s hard to predict when the tipping point will be reached, but what isn’t? I’m not sure, if I’d fully count on Rails for starting or running a business, but I’d definitely include it in my portfolio. Don’t get me wrong, I’m keen to see where Rails will be going, but for the moment I’m planning to stay with at least one leg on the J2EE side of things. Although I gotta say, sometimes I feel a little confused, when I come back from some Rails hacking, back to working on Java-code. It’s all so complicated and unexpressive ;).
So it’s not up to me to decide what the future has in stock for Rails, it’s up to the masses. If they won’t get acquainted with the Rails way of things, and start using it on more and more projects, Rails will not hit the mainstream. If that’s good or bad is up to you. I’ll be there celebrating, if it happens. And for the time being, I’ll make a living of both, J2EE/Java and Rails.
And meanwhile, you might wanna register for RailsConf Europe. See you there.
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