This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: The false promise of template languages 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

This is a repost from an exchange on the Rails mailing list. I got a recommendation to give it a more permanent home and share it with the world. We had a long running thread on whether Rails would benefit from some form of Amrita-style template language that "doesn't contain any code". Steve Longdo wrote about that:

The designers that a lot of the rest of the world works with aren't the same caliber as 37 signals by a long shot. Dreamweaver expert does not likely yield a decent ruby/rhtml coder...

Florian Weber followed up:

i think it's better to get the designer work as close to the real thing as possible. that also avoids wasting time.

And I wrote about how we work at 37signals...

I concur that its a false dichotomy. The designers at 37signals are not Ruby programmers. What they are capable of is reading english-like code fragments and move them around accordingly.

This is how we work:

1. Designer cooks up static HTML template.
2. Programmer sprinkle it with rhtml tags to make the dynamic elements dynamic.
3. Designer and programmer can both revisit the template to make changes.

The reason step 3 is possible is exactly what forces good programmer behavior in the templates:

<% if @user.is_administrator? %>
  # show stuff that's only for administrators
<% end %>

...or

<% for comment in @post.comments %>
   <h2><%= comment.headline %></h2>
<% end %>

No matter how "easy" you make your template language, new dynamic templates are not going to originate from the designers. What you can make possible is cooperation around the same templates once they're alive.

I remain utterly unconvinced that Amrita-style templates are going to do much anything than please the aesthetics that have fallen in love with <li oid="people">Loop</li>. It's not going to put designers in the driver's seat for new templates. And even the one promise of being able to edit in Dreamweaver falls to the wayside when you introduce layouts, partials, or other productivity techniques for dealing with templates.

The pursuit of "no code"-templates reminds me of the search for the holy grail of the MDA camp with "no code"-programs. It's mirage, but its also a play on words of the "a rose by any other name..." variety.

Code is just another word for decisions about instructions. Whether those decisions are made through indirection and tag decoration, they are still decisions about instructions. That is, its still code.

With all that said, I shall not stand in the way for the pursuit of another man's aesthetic dreams. Many will know that I guide many decisions about Rails from my own sense of aesthetics all the time. I'd feel a lot more at ease about it if the proponents of Amrita-style templates would just confess, or realize (as the true motive may still lie in the subconcious ;)), that the pursuit is one of aesthetics.

So. If you want to try this out, feel free. Should a truly non-intrusive solution emerge, I shall even give it serious thought as whether to include it.