DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
  • Refcardz
  • Trend Reports
  • Webinars
  • Zones
  • |
    • Agile
    • AI
    • Big Data
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • DevOps
    • Integration
    • IoT
    • Java
    • Microservices
    • Open Source
    • Performance
    • Security
    • Web Dev
DZone >

I Beat Ruby on Rails by 6 Months

Michael Mainguy user avatar by
Michael Mainguy
·
Feb. 06, 12 · · Interview
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
4.27K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free
Waay back in 2003, I got tired of writing the same boilerplate crud apps and longed for a "better way to do things" so I wrote a rapid development framework called thrust. It used turbine, velocity, and torque to build an entire web application scaffold from an xml database schema definition. I look at the code now and kinda chuckle and shake my head, but something I realized is that it predates the public release of ruby on rails by a good six months. Moreover it predates the closest allegory I can find in the java space (Spring Roo) by a good 6-7 years! I'm not just tooting my own horn, because I remember talking to other people who all said things like "we should just use conventions" and "this stuff is just boilerplate, why don't we generate/template it?", but it seems like most folks just built internal-only proprietary solutions. Couple of lessons/observations: #1 promotion is everything... rails languished in relative obscurity until some folks started evangalizing it. My solution died on the vine as I moved on to bigger and better things. #2 Timing is important, but not MOST important. Being first can be an advantage or a liablilty. Grails got to learn from rails and avoid some of the wonkiness (for example). #3 Some times it's good to go back and look at what you've done for inspiration. I had forgotten about velocity templates...which are pretty useful. I also didn't realize that Maven (arrgh) originated form the Turbine project (which is what my framework was built upon). #4 Great ideas seem to burst on the market in a short period of time and one or two solutions seem to end up dominating. It seems that tech trends infect large numbers of developers simultaneously and then go away.

Source:  http://mikemainguy.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-beat-ruby-on-rails-by-6-months.html
Web application XML database Velocity (JavaScript library) Framework Grail (web browser) app Schema Release (agency) Space (architecture)

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • The Importance of Semantics for Data Lakehouses
  • Getting Started With RSocket Kotlin
  • How to Manage a Red Hat MicroShift Cluster with Shipa
  • DevOps for Enterprise — Are You Doing It Right?

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • MVB Program
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends:

DZone.com is powered by 

AnswerHub logo