There have been a couple of threads recently about how RoR should be easier to install, better documented, and some back-and-forth about use of this list and usefulness/tone of responses. I''d like to share my perspective. Background: 25 years in the business, lots of project management/lead, some management, all time spent in application development ... web development for the past seven years. Started off on mainframes and am now on Windows. Have done some Unix work, but my clients and employers are usually Windows shops. Used ASP, ASP.Net, Perl/Mason, J2EE and Rails wins hands-down. - to a first approximation, the more people happily using Ruby/RoR the better for the community. - not everyone can just "build from source". Not everyone knows how to check things out of a source code repository. Some people don''t know what tar/untar means. People who might be incredibly productive Rails developers use Windows and have never used a compiler outside of Visual Studio. - most commercial applications are reasonably easy to install. After the install you can compare features, ease-of-use, ease-of-learning, etc. If something (i.e. RoR) is hard(er) to get installed, it won''t have a chance to be compared. - just because you found it easy to install RoR and you found the (often conflicting) Wiki documentation clear doesn''t mean I''m stupid or unworthy of using RoR if I found it hard. - I am trying to get RoR accepted at a sight where a support group sets up everyone''s workstation so they can be Cold Fusion developers. Then they are sent to CF training. Someone who is used to being (yes) spoon-fed is probably unwilling to do what it currently takes to get up and running with RoR. Is that okay? Maybe at this pre-1.0 stage it is. Do we eventually want those CF developers being Rails developers? Probably. - it was great when I first came on this list, got stuck and posted a question which got answered immediately and I was on my way. If some people get stuck and only have so much time to spend on evaluating something new, we may lose them. My advice if a question annoys you: delete it and don''t think about it anymore. Sorry for the rambling. I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that getting needed features coded and a 1.0 release out the door take priority over easy installers and better documentation. But let''s not clobber people who are asking for help (or whining). For every person who posts to the list about how the documentation/installer is insufficient there are probably a dozen people who just go away quietly, and that''s a loss for all of us.
On 9/15/05, Steve Downey <sldowney-TVLZxgkOlNX2fBVCVOL8/A@public.gmane.org> wrote:> - it was great when I first came on this list, got stuck and posted a > question which got answered immediately and I was on my way. If some > people get stuck and only have so much time to spend on evaluating > something new, we may lose them. My advice if a question annoys you: > delete it and don''t think about it anymore.+1 One of the reasons I fell in love with Ruby and RoR was that their respective mailing lists were (and for the most part still are) free from a bunch of useless RTFM-type replies. The long-timers have always seemed both willing to help newcomers and encouraging. That sense of welcome is historically rare in technology groups, and I think it''s a large part of the reason that both Ruby and RoR are starting to get a lot of traction. Just keep this in mind before you flame people for asking what you think are "stupid questions" or for making "unenlightened suggestions" -- the more people start adopting Ruby/Rails, the higher your chances of finding work using the tools you love. Flame on, if you want to be stuck using PHP or Java for the rest of your career. ;-) -- Regards, John Wilger ----------- Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat. "I don''t know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn''t matter." - Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland
Ive installed rails/bindings/lighttpd on 5 development and 2 production boxes now. One of the development boxes was Debian, one Windows, everything else has been FreeBSD. My finding is that with FreeBSD it is an almost a painfully simple process. Debian, seems a bit messier, but maybe thats just because Im so used to the simplicity of the Rails FreeBSD process. The one click installer was extremely simple as well. I have also since needed to install PHP. I find it much more difficult. The point being, I think the majority of people that install any of these platforms from scratch are going to find them all roughly just as difficult. What is the difference, is that PHP for example is already pre-set up for many people... many have never installed it even if they have developed in it for a number of years. I could be way off, but that''s my take. Id be interested to hear more about this. _______________________________________________ Rails mailing list Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
I can say that for me, the conflicting doco on getting FCGI setup with Apache for production was confusing/slowed me down... And I''ve been using Apache for 6 years. Hopefully once we hit 1.0 this can be reduced to a single set of steps that reflects the current codebase...> From: Steve Downey <sldowney-TVLZxgkOlNX2fBVCVOL8/A@public.gmane.org> > Reply-To: <rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org> > Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:49:29 -0700 > To: <rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org> > Subject: [Rails] RTFM, Money-making opportunity, etc. > > - just because you found it easy to install RoR and you found the (often > conflicting) Wiki documentation clear doesn''t mean I''m stupid or > unworthy of using RoR if I found it hard.
As an alternative testimonial, I''ve found Rails to be approximately 100 times easier to set up than Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere. To get Tomcat running and connected to a database, you have to understand the difference between the common/lib and server/lib directories, the difference between a <Resource> definition in server and application contexts, and exactly when and when not to use a <ResourceLink> vs. a resource descriptor in the deployment xml. In other words, it''s a recipe for frustration the first couple of times you do it. Do I want a one-click installer for a Rails production environment? Yes. Do our ''competitors'' always offer one? Definitely no. On 9/15/05, Hunter Hillegas <lists-HAWAbpnI61OZ1JSuHaJ1sQC/G2K4zDHf@public.gmane.org> wrote:> I can say that for me, the conflicting doco on getting FCGI setup with > Apache for production was confusing/slowed me down... And I''ve been using > Apache for 6 years. > > Hopefully once we hit 1.0 this can be reduced to a single set of steps that > reflects the current codebase... > > > From: Steve Downey <sldowney-TVLZxgkOlNX2fBVCVOL8/A@public.gmane.org> > > Reply-To: <rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org> > > Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:49:29 -0700 > > To: <rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org> > > Subject: [Rails] RTFM, Money-making opportunity, etc. > > > > - just because you found it easy to install RoR and you found the (often > > conflicting) Wiki documentation clear doesn''t mean I''m stupid or > > unworthy of using RoR if I found it hard. > > > _______________________________________________ > Rails mailing list > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails >
On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 09:36 -0400, Wilson Bilkovich wrote:> As an alternative testimonial, I''ve found Rails to be approximately > 100 times easier to set up than Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere. > To get Tomcat running and connected to a database, you have to > understand the difference between the common/lib and server/lib > directories, the difference between a <Resource> definition in server > and application contexts, and exactly when and when not to use a > <ResourceLink> vs. a resource descriptor in the deployment xml. In > other words, it''s a recipe for frustration the first couple of times > you do it.Yup, right on, and if you want to do something interesting like using Apache and mod_jk to delegate servlet requests to Tomcat, it''s even more crazy. Not that we should emulate that, but, it''s good to remember that the Java world isn''t all roses either. Yours, Tom