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Not to cry sour grapes here but there is not one mention of Merb in that entire blog post. I personally wrote merb in order to show that rails internals could b

Not to cry sour grapes here but there is not one mention of Merb in that entire blog post. I personally wrote merb in order to show that rails internals could be much better, modular and faster. I did heavy duty politicking to get the two teams to come together and I think the rails merb merger is one of the coolest open source success stories vie heard of. But not a single mention of merb in this entire post. I'm not complaining but it seems disingenuous not to mention it as the sole reason I wrote merb was to push rails forward. And when it looked like merb might possibly overtake rails I went ahead and gave merb to the rails project and got the two teams together so there wasn't wasted effort. After all to have ruby and rails itself win we needed to compete with java and python and php. Merb was starting to fragment the ruby community as it became a more and more viable option and I did some personal heavy politicking to get it merged back into rails so we could take on the world instead of infighting within the ruby community. I think it's been a great success story and most of the ideas of merb's architecture have made it into rails. So I'm incredibly happy to see rails 3 finally come out. And I'm incredibly happy that my little experiment in making rails architecture better has paid off and the two projects merged. But I do think it's a bit weak that merb was not mentioned once in the article. (Edit) all this being said I don't want to come across as co plaining. My work on merb ended up exactly as I wanted it to, it made rails better. So huge congratulations to the rails team for making this happen! (Edit) http://rubyonrails.org/merb http://rubyonrails.org/merb

dasil003 16y ago
Offtopic: when are you announcing your next project? We're already feeling the lack of your presence at EY as we move to AppCloud. A cool new project would do much to offset that general disappointment (not that it's your problem).
- ezmobius 16y ago
  I'm working at Vmware now on a cloud operating system. That's about all I can say right now but it is what runs vmforce and vmware's partnership with google app engine to get spring running there very well. Multiple cloud multiple language paas.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Go on ..
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    > I'm working at Vmware now on a cloud operating system. Will it be open source and how does it compare to OpenStack?
- larrywright 16y ago
  He did, indirectly: "So if you want to get in touch with me my new email address is ez@vmware.com ;)" (http://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/21954080229 http://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/21954080229)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  You do know that zedshaw himself has basically retracted that, right? http://zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html
  - tl 16y ago
    Except that he didn't. He said the faux tough guy speech (that everyone liked) overshadowed the actual message of his rant.
- technoweenie 16y ago
  OP: Yet another example of how Zed was right when he said, "Rails is a Ghetto." IMO, the Rails/Merb merger is a counter example. It's easier and way more fun to rewrite and port code. Major refactorings with thousands of legacy apps are less fun. It takes a patient, skilled programmer to do it. It's an amazing community achievement that the two teams were able to put aside their differences and work together, like professionals, towards this massive goal. The blog post is a release announcement meant to focus on features and improvements, not a history lesson. I wouldn't take the lack of a Merb mention as any kind of slight against the old Merb team's efforts.
wycats 16y ago
I just wanted to say a few things. First of all, this is a huge milestone for Rails. From my perspective, this work is three or four years in the making, from the beginning of the Merb efforts, through the merge, and on until the final release of Rails 3. From a personal perspective, this release is huge closure for me; I feel like I’ve been working on Rails 3 (and associated projects, like Thor and Bundler) for years. When the Merb team merged into the Rails team, we very quickly got to work. The previous animosity actually melted away rather quickly, to be replaced with the somewhat tense, but productive give and take of a core team. One of the really amazing things to come out of the last couple of years is a whole slew of new committers to Rails (in addition to Carl and me): José Valim, Aaron Patterson, Xavier Noria and Santiago Pastorino. Rails 3 would still be limping along if not for these guys, who really went above and beyond the call of duty in the past few months to get things past the finish line. In light of all this, I really haven’t thought much about the old Merb/Rails party lines in a while. I’ve been too focused on Rails and Bundler, and the rest of the core team (old and new alike) have been busy helping.
jamesbritt 16y ago
"Merb was starting to fragment the ruby community as it became a more and more viable option and I did some personal heavy politicking to get it merged back into rails so we could take on the world instead of infighting within the ruby community." Interesting, if disheartening, perspective. I much prefer to see greater diversity within a language. I want to see more frameworks, more exploration, more choice. What some may call fragmentation is in fact rich and vibrant and valuable. And the idea that there is some sort of battle going on among languages, that Ruby needs to "win" against Java or PHP or any language, is truly perverse. I fear this battle mentality is by no means a minority opinion among Rubyists. I prefer to use Ramaze for Web development, but I'm glad people can pick Camping or Wave or Wuby or IOWA or Sinatra or any of the dozen other options out there. There are interesting things being done, and not simply so they can be subsumed by some One True Framework. I was disappointed not to see Nitro get the attention it deserved, to have Chad Fowler tell a conference audience that people working on Nitro should just stop, because "Rails won", was a turning point in how I viewed the larger Ruby culture. There are many smart, adventurous people doing interesting things with Ruby, but there is also a pervasive cliquishness and neophobia regarding anything that is not somehow tied to Rails. It's great to see progress made in Rails, but the solidification of Ruby === Rails leaves a bad taste.
- robryan 16y ago
  It needs to at least compete with Java/PHP ect. In order to create a big enough ecosystem to provide all the libraries and core features needed and keep them up to date. As well as have enough people explaining things that new people don't feel overly intimidated.
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    A language community needs to be robust enough to look after these things. This is not the same thing as, nor does it require, "beating" other languages. Even accounting for limited time and attention from interested developers this is not a zero-sum situation. Language communities do not need to push for a monoculture in tools and frameworks to be robust; cultures that avoid this are much healthier in the long run.
msie 16y ago
I thought the big thing about Rails 3 was the merging of Merb and Rails. Would it have really hurt DHH to include a sentence of acknowledgement in his long post? I am disappointed.
- tjogin 16y ago
  They've been yammering about that for two years already. Maybe it just slipped his mind, as it hasn't been news for two years now.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Quite understandable, I sympathize. Seems he mentioned every major improvement except the Merb integration. If it makes you feel any better, I was under the impression that everyone in the Rails/Merb community already knows that Rails 3 = Rails + Merb. Anyway, great work, we all appreciate it.

dasil003 16y ago

Offtopic: when are you announcing your next project? We're already feeling the lack of your presence at EY as we move to AppCloud. A cool new project would do much to offset that general disappointment (not that it's your problem).

ezmobius 16y ago
I'm working at Vmware now on a cloud operating system. That's about all I can say right now but it is what runs vmforce and vmware's partnership with google app engine to get spring running there very well. Multiple cloud multiple language paas.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Go on ..
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > I'm working at Vmware now on a cloud operating system. Will it be open source and how does it compare to OpenStack?
larrywright 16y ago
He did, indirectly: "So if you want to get in touch with me my new email address is ez@vmware.com ;)" (http://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/21954080229 http://twitter.com/ezmobius/status/21954080229)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

steveklabnik 16y ago
You do know that zedshaw himself has basically retracted that, right? http://zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html
- tl 16y ago
  Except that he didn't. He said the faux tough guy speech (that everyone liked) overshadowed the actual message of his rant.
technoweenie 16y ago
OP: Yet another example of how Zed was right when he said, "Rails is a Ghetto." IMO, the Rails/Merb merger is a counter example. It's easier and way more fun to rewrite and port code. Major refactorings with thousands of legacy apps are less fun. It takes a patient, skilled programmer to do it. It's an amazing community achievement that the two teams were able to put aside their differences and work together, like professionals, towards this massive goal. The blog post is a release announcement meant to focus on features and improvements, not a history lesson. I wouldn't take the lack of a Merb mention as any kind of slight against the old Merb team's efforts.

wycats 16y ago

I just wanted to say a few things. First of all, this is a huge milestone for Rails. From my perspective, this work is three or four years in the making, from the beginning of the Merb efforts, through the merge, and on until the final release of Rails 3. From a personal perspective, this release is huge closure for me; I feel like I’ve been working on Rails 3 (and associated projects, like Thor and Bundler) for years. When the Merb team merged into the Rails team, we very quickly got to work. The previous animosity actually melted away rather quickly, to be replaced with the somewhat tense, but productive give and take of a core team. One of the really amazing things to come out of the last couple of years is a whole slew of new committers to Rails (in addition to Carl and me): José Valim, Aaron Patterson, Xavier Noria and Santiago Pastorino. Rails 3 would still be limping along if not for these guys, who really went above and beyond the call of duty in the past few months to get things past the finish line. In light of all this, I really haven’t thought much about the old Merb/Rails party lines in a while. I’ve been too focused on Rails and Bundler, and the rest of the core team (old and new alike) have been busy helping.

jamesbritt 16y ago

"Merb was starting to fragment the ruby community as it became a more and more viable option and I did some personal heavy politicking to get it merged back into rails so we could take on the world instead of infighting within the ruby community." Interesting, if disheartening, perspective. I much prefer to see greater diversity within a language. I want to see more frameworks, more exploration, more choice. What some may call fragmentation is in fact rich and vibrant and valuable. And the idea that there is some sort of battle going on among languages, that Ruby needs to "win" against Java or PHP or any language, is truly perverse. I fear this battle mentality is by no means a minority opinion among Rubyists. I prefer to use Ramaze for Web development, but I'm glad people can pick Camping or Wave or Wuby or IOWA or Sinatra or any of the dozen other options out there. There are interesting things being done, and not simply so they can be subsumed by some One True Framework. I was disappointed not to see Nitro get the attention it deserved, to have Chad Fowler tell a conference audience that people working on Nitro should just stop, because "Rails won", was a turning point in how I viewed the larger Ruby culture. There are many smart, adventurous people doing interesting things with Ruby, but there is also a pervasive cliquishness and neophobia regarding anything that is not somehow tied to Rails. It's great to see progress made in Rails, but the solidification of Ruby === Rails leaves a bad taste.

robryan 16y ago
It needs to at least compete with Java/PHP ect. In order to create a big enough ecosystem to provide all the libraries and core features needed and keep them up to date. As well as have enough people explaining things that new people don't feel overly intimidated.
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  A language community needs to be robust enough to look after these things. This is not the same thing as, nor does it require, "beating" other languages. Even accounting for limited time and attention from interested developers this is not a zero-sum situation. Language communities do not need to push for a monoculture in tools and frameworks to be robust; cultures that avoid this are much healthier in the long run.

msie 16y ago

I thought the big thing about Rails 3 was the merging of Merb and Rails. Would it have really hurt DHH to include a sentence of acknowledgement in his long post? I am disappointed.

tjogin 16y ago
They've been yammering about that for two years already. Maybe it just slipped his mind, as it hasn't been news for two years now.

SkyMarshal 16y ago

Quite understandable, I sympathize. Seems he mentioned every major improvement except the Merb integration. If it makes you feel any better, I was under the impression that everyone in the Rails/Merb community already knows that Rails 3 = Rails + Merb. Anyway, great work, we all appreciate it.