This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Microsoft to chase phantom Ajax scientists Feed Title: Loud Thinking Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by David Heinemeier Hansson Latest Posts From Loud Thinking

It's great to hear that Microsoft is waking up to the message that Ajax used to be really hard. They're even going to build tools to make it easier as part of Visual Studio. Fitzgerald says:

"People who do (AJAX development) are rocket scientists," Fitzgerald said. "In some ways, this papers over the mess that is JavaScript development. It's easy-to-build 'spaghetti' code."

But (you knew that was coming). I'm sorry to rain on your parade, Fitz, but the world has moved on since that was the case. Ruby on Rails, for one, shipped with top notch Ajax support all the way back in March. We've been improving the situation rapidly ever since.

And the next release, the just-around-the-corner 0.13, is taking that to new heights with script.aculo.us, no-effort auto-completion, upload progress, and a new version of Prototype.

When is Fitzgerald and team going to ship? Some time in November.

So if you're looking to get jiggy with the Ajax, don't hold your breath for Microsoft to deliver. Jump on the Rails and enjoy the tightest integration of Ajax in any complete tech stack. We've been making it "just as easy as not to" for quite a while now and shipped products with tens of thousands of users on it.

There's no time like present time to open the trunk and getting out of Redmond's grip.