Brainspl.at: Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by S. Potter

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:11:31 +0000

I personally think educated arguments and discussions are very healthy. Let's not be too politically correct that we do not even educate people the differences between the frameworks, because that would be a detriment to the Ruby community. Discussions where people can point out good and bad points of different stacks is a very healthy place to be. It is only when the fan boys with no independent thoughts and no humo(u)r enter the debate that we end up with the "you suck and I rock" mentality. I wrote a blog entry about creating a healthier discussion environment the day before this entry seems to have been posted: http://snakesgemscoffee.blogspot.com/2008/05/rails-rocks-x-sucks-how-provincial.html Hopefully people can tell when I am being sardonic. Lighten up and loose the over political correctness it doesn't get us anywhere. All we need to do is ignore the irrelevant noise of the fan boys.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Matt

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:55:23 +0000

@Dal -- so they could both beat up Uwe Boll?

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Dick Davies

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:53:41 +0000

I agree with you, and it's certainly the way the Ruby community has treated me. But I would point out DHH has thrown enough stones in the past (at Java, WS-*, constraints in the database, etc) not to expect some flak in return.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Dal

Mon, 26 May 2008 16:53:01 +0000

I still want to see Ezra and DHH go at it in a boxing ring. Maybe even a cage match! :-) We have to settle this competition somehow.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Alex Coles

Sun, 25 May 2008 18:58:20 +0000

@Ben I disagree completely. I think Merb should keep up "better framework". While "better" is a pretty lose, subjective term, I think Merb should be competitive. There is nothing wrong with competition between Rails and Merb. Competition is very healthy for Ruby as a platform, provided its respectful and doesn't break out into ego wars. With Wycats and Ezra sharing some of their optimization successes back with Rails, I think they've proven that is not the case.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Ben Nevile

Sat, 24 May 2008 05:19:14 +0000

@ louis -- looks like the maintainer of the merb homepage read your comment. I completely agree with you btw.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Lawrence Pit

Sat, 24 May 2008 02:24:58 +0000

Everybody should hack together their own web framework instead of using one from someone else. That will get you respect for first movers like rails.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by midget_nuts

Fri, 23 May 2008 03:50:21 +0000

Ok, my final attempt at a penii related Merb 1.0 release slogan. MerB==========D~~ The Ron Jeremy of Ruby Frameworks

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by planetmcd

Thu, 22 May 2008 18:05:49 +0000

Speaking of Highlander: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3if545c66bc7e57054442cdd46721ae9c0

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by ilan

Thu, 22 May 2008 16:38:48 +0000

How about all those Beta users that were caught with their pants down when VHS was declared the winner? People that just purchased a HDDVD gadget from Walmart just before the announcement? From a purely selfish standpoint (and a former Beta owner) I just want to know who will win so I can invest now in order to make myself more marketable in the future. IT now imho, is all about risk management with your skills portfolio. Unlike 15 years ago, most recruiting today reminds me of plug and play. Being the true coward that I am, I loved ruby from '99 but only officially switched over once rails climbed to the top of the hill. Ofcourse, we are concerned as we don't want to be legacy. I have a whole bunch of skills that are totally useless now (for example, I was a DCOM master in the last century) I have now worked with rails for years and am watching merb's development very closely and will switch over for developer plug and play compatibility when I believe that it will have the momentum to overtake rails. For those that are disgusted with my viewpoint, I offer my sincerest apologies. I wish I was more noble but at least I am honest.. :) I was a fortran77 coder, that moved to C++ (10 years), then Java (5 years) and now ruby (3 years) and I will continue to migrate to the tech/language which will ultimately win in order to keep working within the industry and hopefully not pick up too many losers along the way. ilan "the sheep"

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by planetmcd

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:35:06 +0000

Healthy Competition is good. The Ruby implementation shows this. I've not seen the various teams bashing one another. They each want their own project to be the best and work to that. I believe there may be cross pollination going on. I surmise this is what Ezra is pointing to. Derogatory competition (Rails sucks, Java sucks type of stuff) leads to hard feeling, entrenchment, and the inability to learn from your competitors. Just because its common for things to devolve to that level, doesn't mean they have to. As a community leader, I think its great that Ezra is setting a tone that can foster positive growth. Not just because its more mature, but because it's more useful to the end result of making Merb. I don't think Honda engineers go around saying Toyota cars suck. They acknowledge they are excellent and try to make better cars than their excellent competitors. Toyota does the same. That could be the same situation with Rails and Merb with smart people working on both.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by sci-dev

Thu, 22 May 2008 11:57:34 +0000

It is a pure truth for "ruby community ecosystem"(tm Ezra). But when it comes to explain to boss or to customers why you would not use Rails for their app, i must admit you'll use some killer arguments that will show the true Merb greatness, and maybe some other arguments that will bury Rails very deep.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Chu Yeow

Thu, 22 May 2008 09:21:48 +0000

Exactly Ezra! I was rather disappointed to read Michael Kilshin's recent post [http://novemberain.com/2008/5/11/state-of-merb-before-1-0-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/] considering he is a merb committer, but I was pretty sure he was the odd one out :)

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Mathias Stjernstrom

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:56:16 +0000

Isn't human-nature to find weakness in things around us just to validate our own behavior? - How can he dress like that? - How the fuck can he use windows? - Hah! He still uses rails! - Bahh, xml situps....

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Ben

Thu, 22 May 2008 05:18:37 +0000

I prefer frameworks that don't require me to register with nickserv to communicate with the community. You wouldn't believe how much ruby talk is going on in #register-with-nickserv

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Dr Nic

Thu, 22 May 2008 04:52:10 +0000

I loved the Highlander.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by James Golick

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:14:45 +0000

Amen.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Arya A.

Thu, 22 May 2008 02:01:43 +0000

I'm sure a lot of us agree with you in that putting Merb and Rails head-to-head isn't the goal. But unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to be competitive. I mean look at all the other problems human competitiveness plays a role in: racism, war, etc. I wish it were as easy as telling people to play nice.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Davis Zanetti Cabral

Thu, 22 May 2008 01:10:39 +0000

After this post, I really need to do something with merb, really...

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by ebdb

Thu, 22 May 2008 00:39:13 +0000

Merb and Rails solve the exactly the same problems for exactly the same people, yet somehow they're not competing. How does that work?

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by louis

Thu, 22 May 2008 00:27:13 +0000

you know, i don't want to start a flame war, and i agree entirely with the idea of the post. but, it sounds disingenuous when the title tag on merbivore is 'looking for a better framework?'. anyone not deluding themselves would agree that this is a reference to the dominant ruby web framework. am i really the only person who noticed this?

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by x

Thu, 22 May 2008 00:15:50 +0000

I think humor is the best way to address "serious" things like this. Lets rock out with our MerB LolDongs out.

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by whatevan

Thu, 22 May 2008 00:11:58 +0000

to the question in your title, on some level, i think the answer is "yes". we just don't need to be mean about it. even what you describe as coexisting is still competition. and there should be. this is how we find out the answers to gerardo's question. there was competition between people who say tdd vs bdd, which is dying down as the barriers of usefulness and understanding arise in publication meets the general developer's demand for such information. there is one recent post that stands as a clear exception to what i am saying, and is probably more what you are talking about. i don't know the name of it, who wrote it, or where it is... and i don't care. it was rude and posturey in a way that almost nothing is. maybe this is more common than i am seeing, but i have enjoyed most of the banter, and hope that healthy and constructive competition can continue. at least until there is more documentation for merb :)

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Gerardo Santana

Wed, 21 May 2008 23:50:31 +0000

Which are those strengths and weaknesses?

"Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?" by Evan David Light

Wed, 21 May 2008 23:23:45 +0000

Amen, brother.

Does it have to be a competition between Rails and Merb?

ezmobius — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:12:00 +0000

It seems like a lot of folks out there want there to be a battle royal between Merb and Rails. I just wanted to dispel this myth.

Merb was written because it scratched an itch that I and many of my hosting customers had, mainly memory footprint, speed, concurrent requests and simple maintainable code. This does not mean that Merb has to be thought of as a Rails competitor. Merb stands on its own merits just as Rails does.

I feel that both of these frameworks have great strengths and weaknesses and that they compliment each other in many ways. Face it Merb would never be around if Rails had not come first. And I see Merb as a great experimentation playground for exploring web framework functionality while learning a great many things from Rails and building a fresh view based on Rails strengths and weaknesses.

There is no reason that a lot of the goodness in Merb cannot be applied back to Rails, but it is no small feat to trim down rails size without breaking backwards compatibility.

I view it like this, more choices make the Ruby ecosystem a better place. So let’s just stop with the Rails VS Merb stuff. How about people choose what framework they want to use based on the frameworks merits and features rather then religious arguments about how my framework can beat up your framework.

The Ruby community in general has been exceedingly nice as long as I have been a part of it. I wrote Merb for a reason, if Merb’s philosophies agree with your tastes then great, use Merb. If Rails is your thing then that’s great too! We do not need a monoculture.

Rails has been Ruby’s killer app and has brought Ruby to the masses. But Ruby is growing up, there are many alternate Ruby implementations now and they all work together for the common good of Ruby.

I’d like the same thing to happen with Rails, Merb and all the other ruby web frameworks. Let’s all work together to make the Ruby ecosystem stronger. We do not need to fight amongst ourselves when there are plenty of other Programming language communities to fight with :P

I guess what I am saying is that I see the proliferation of ruby web frameworks as a sign that Ruby itself has “arrived” and is here to stay. So can’t we all just get along in Ruby web framework land?