This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Curt Hibbs. Original Post: A historic confluence of talent Feed Title: Curt's Comments Feed URL: http://www.contegix.com/rss/feed.xml Feed Description: Nothing fancy... just a place to say stuff. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Curt Hibbs Latest Posts From Curt's Comments

Obie Fernandaz from ThoughtWorks has written a fan piece about Ruby on Rails. He obviously likes Rails a lot—I can sympathize with that! :-)

He makes a very strong statement when he says:

So the day that Gavin or JetBrains decide to write a rapid-application development framework like Rails, I might have to re-evaluate my stance, but for now you should expect Rails to reach critical mass by next year and completely overwhelm the Java web application market in both mindshare and talent pool by the end of the decade.

A lot of things can happen by then end of the decade, and I will certainly be happy if Rails, or something even better has the dominant mindshare by then. But the part that really got my attention, was the idea that the shift to Rails is being driven not just by Java developers looking to reduce complexity and increase productivity, but also by designers who are abandoning PHP (and similar) solutions for Rails. He characterizes this as a historic confluence, and he just may be right:

The design people have better tools than anyone else. These guys can understand elegance of design, both visually and expressed as patterns in code. Right now masses of these types of developers are pouring into the Rails community from the PHP (and similar) communities. They bring with them considerable design and usability skills that complement their programming sometimes elementary abilities. They are introducing kick-ass AJAX components and eye-candy that are being incorporated into the standard Rails toolset as we speak. The nubys that do not have OO programming experience are being helped by Ruby old-timers and the other significant group of developers streaming into the Rails community: senior Java developers looking for something better that what we have to deal with now. This is a historic confluence of talent that will continue to grow and synergize.

But please don’t just read my quotes, go read the entire article—its worth it. If his unabashed enthusiasm for Rails is too much for your taste, try to see past the proclamations of revolution and see the trend and influences on that trend that he has identified. I’m definitely onboard with that.