This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Rails as a disruptive technology 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

Bruce Tate's discovery of Rails and his comments about where it could (or should) be applied got me thinking of Clayton Christensen again. I've been reading The Innovator's Solution (and the Dilemma too, actually). In Christensen's model for describing disruptive technologies, Tate's description fits in nicely with the notion of over-served customers:

I’m not going to pretend that anyone would ever use Rails for everything. But think of the number of applications that you build that do nothing but put a big web front end on top of a persistent model. That’s a huge part of what we do. If Ruby and Rails can make you that much more productive, and if it solves the problem, why wouldn’t you?

The industry is being massively over-served by J2EE/.NET in the majority of projects. The backlash against EJBs and other Titanic-type technologies demonstrates this well. And I see a hope in the increased collective awareness that maybe not all projects need the tools targeted at the very most complex ones. And not only don't need, but are damaged by.

In this frame of thought, Rails is able to deliver incredible improvements for the majority of projects that are currently being over-served by J2EE/.NET by sacrificing a whole herd of golden calves. The sacrifices are condemned by the high priest exactly because of their status as high priests, which means they work on the most complex projects and hence cast all decisions on technology in that context. Would this work for the 5% most difficult projects? If not, then it "doesn't scale".

This, according to Clayton's theory, invites the incumbents and their high priests to flea higher up in the market when attacked at "the low end". They seek refuge by attempting to deal with even more complex cases, which in turn makes their tools even more complex.

At the same time, Rails as a disruptive technology undergoes rapid improvement that expands the number of projects for which its a good fit all the time. What may have started as only suitable for simple projects become suitable for medium projects (top of the bell) and in time becomes suitable for the complex and even very complex projects.

As this process unfolds, it's natural that both a fair share of cognitive dissonance will be developed by the incumbents and their high priests and that a lot of companies following them will be caught in the competency trap. High rents are being extracted from the accumulated knowledge and technology held by big corporations and the companies and consultants around them. Attempts to uproot will not be taken kindly.