Talk:Ruby on Rails

Rails in production

Developers researching new web application development frameworks need to judge the maturity and stability of the platform. In order to better facilitate this judgement I am adding a rails in production section to the rails wiki page. This page will list extremely popular websites that use the ruby on rails development framework in production environments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.2.161.85 (talk) 05:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Significance

Significance - Almost all of the assertions in the signficance section are simpy untrue. For example, RoR isnt even close to being an early adopter of ORM. Lets keep it deleted until someone can cite some sources and make non partisan points

I'll second that. "Ruby on Rails led the charge among next-generation web application frameworks, popularizing features that are now considered standard, such as scaffolding, object-relational mapping and simple installation." This is completely unverifiable and I'm not even sure it even makes sense. If this weren't an open source project, it would sound like marketing copy.

RoR goes by the motto "convention over configuration" and many things that are supposed to work, just work for you and you can alter it based on your needs.--Duncan21fan (talk) 09:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Rails Injected

(comment moved from top of discussion into regular discussion zone - I apologize if this was intentionally left at the top, but I saw no reason for it to be there).

Hey, I'm pulling out the Needle part. Believe me, as a good friend of the Needle creator (Jamis Buck), I know about the unsuccessful effort that was made to integrate Needle into Rails (see http://ruby.jamisbuck.org/rails-injected.html for details). Essentially, David decided on his own solution for the DI functionality rather than creating a dependency on Needle. So, long story short: Needle is not a part of Rails --Dan 23:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

criticism?

I am probably being rude - I don't know wiki etiquette and i haven't read *any* of the comments below. ignore as you like: I am trying to decide which language I will learn next and this article makes it sound like something that I could connect with easily. However, it makes me nervous that there is no criticism section. was this written by partial parties? will i have to find the criticisms on my own when a project blows up? excluding the unattractive stuff seems counter to the [unrealistic?] goal here.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.104.193.173 (talk) 08:02, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Note -- "RDBMS", like several other acronyms, is not well-defined...

Most everyone seems to think that rails is the best thing ever.

I hadn't really read any criticism until this slashdot post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158096&cid=13286688

What are the real shortcomings of rails?

I'll say a criticism: there's so much hype surrounding RoR it makes me want to puke. Silver bullet...furthermore there's all this hype for Ruby. Smalltalk syntax. Forget it. I'll go with PHP and Cake.

I'm not sure what he means with reference to Smalltalk syntax. Whether or not it's a good or bad thing, or whether or not Ruby is close to Smalltalk or not, anyone who sticks with PHP when looking for clean syntax (like Smalltalk) is obviously out of their mind =)

Both Rails and Smalltalk (and my other favorite language, Objective-C) using message-passing to communicate between objects. That, in combination with blocks (akin to anonymous functions... but not quite) make Rails rather Smalltalk-like, but not necessarily in syntax.

I'm not really convinced about the argument about table changes leading to problems in code - well-designed table schemas shouldn't change that much, and if you're messing with table schemas in a production database, you get everything you deserve anyway.

Add to that the fact that Rails has migrations, and this argument disappears. People also argue that binding an ORM so tightly to the table (in the way of columns becoming attributes) is a bad thing... but they forget that it's a convention. If you change your database, but don't want to go change it in 30 spots in your controller, you can just remap it in your model object.

Ruby isn't (in my observation) too much slower than Perl, Python or PHP. But that's just me. I've never done anything really big in any of these languages. I do keep hearing how it's a bit slower than Perl or Python; I'm sure people are working on it. And there's always mod_ruby. =)

And Ruby is changing, but distributors have managed to keep migration compatibility pretty well (I still see ruby1.6 and ruby1.8 packaged separately, for example). And all languages are evolving and have snags when going to next revisions, I don't think it's fair to pick on it on those grounds.

But all of this is just me. --Wwwwolf 18:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I love rails and ruby, so I can probably give some balanced criticisms of it. I only have 2 -- 1) Java has many more libraries available than ruby, and 2) rails is more concerned with being elegant and fun to work in than it is with speed. Speed is not terrible however, and newer releases are improving.Gattster 10:28, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

QUOTE: Ruby isn't (in my observation) too much slower than Perl, Python or PHP

I would disagree, my experience has been the hard PHP code is much faster than Ruby. I've always taken it as performance payoff for ease of design and maintaince(like compiled(i.e., C++) vs. scripting). I'm comparing a php5 homemade MVC framework verus Ruby here, not procedural(which would only lean more towards php for speed). I'll definetly agree Ruby is fast enough for what it does though.

Opinions doesn't matter. Fact is that Ruby is slow as molasses [1].

Another problem I notice is that Ruby doesn't enforce the View strongly enough. Infact I'd have a hard time calling ruby a MVC pattern, more like MC. It's not that you can't create a view, but that by allowing any ruby code you open a lazy back door. It's like giving a kid a hundred bucks; shoving him in a candy store, and expecting him not to buy anything. Ruby could use a template engine that restricts logic.

As for the database, It's really a design choice, rather than a flaw. I wouldn't mind mentioning it, but I wouldn't call it a bad way to set up Map Objects, infact I like it.(plus, from my understanding metaprogramming like that is the Ruby way)

2 cents... Capi crimm 22:28, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Rails' views are like giving anyone 100 dollars: Yeah, it's very possible they spend it on stupid things, but there's always a moderately good chance they spend it on something very worthwhile, if they have such needs in mind.

Rails could have gone the way of some other projects (like Smarty) and design a completely new language for templating. Yet, they preferred the "full stack" approach and thought using Embedded Ruby as the template language was most straightforward and logical. Yeah, this may make newbies put too much logic in the view. No, this means experienced or disciplined coders will not put their logic in views nevertheless. And hopefully, newbies will learn soon enough. (I made this mistake in my own first Rails app and noticed how the thing started to creak in the edges, when someone said "you're supposed to put that code in the controller" it all started to make sense - now I'm in process of cleaning up the damage. =( )

By the way, I'd appreciate it if this discussion wouldn't continue much further unless we can get some good, referenced points for the article itself. This is an article talk page, not a development framework advocacy forum. And sorry for being wordy again. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 22:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Going the way of Smarty would have been a bad choice, IMHO. More importantly your argument doesn't really stand up to common practice. It's easy to say a ``good" programmer will follow best practice, but I can extend that and say things like PHP is secure since a ``good" phper will follow best security practices. I could get rid of almost all the language criticisms out there. I mean if every developer followed best practices we wouldn't need private variables, but the fact is we do have them. The ruby developers are free to make design choices. If they want to leave the view open then thats fine, but it's a valid criticism. I'm not sure what type of reference you need. Looking at other articles they really don't have any for criticisms, after all criticisms aren't hard facts, just opinions of weak spots. I can get you article references discussing view/* seperation?

There is also the fact that rails overwrites certain core functions of ruby. Not exactly the best idea for compatibility and integration. ~capiCrimm

Overwrites? Or overrides? Or extends? Most of the changes I've seen involve adding useful methods to core classes, and rarely does it break their existing methods. The glory of Ruby is that you can reopen classes and reimplement methods. Yes, it must be done carefully, but Rails does so very well.

Legacy Databases

I'm not convinced by the assertion that "Rails is also fairly neutral when it comes to the database schema - a Rails application can be developed atop an already existing database".

ActiveRecord has a number of significant restrictions including: no support for compound keys; no support for default values based on functions; and no ordering of sql based on referential constraints. I don't see that as a major criticism of Rails, but as an acknowledged limitation to it's current applicable domain.

I suggest changing the assertion to "some already existing databases", or possibly just deleting it altogether. I have no idea how to quantify "fairly neutral", or to meaningfully estimate the proportion of existing databases that ActiveRecord might cope with. But I believe that ActiveRecord is less "neutral" than (Java) mapping frameworks such as TOPLink and Hibernate.

I last looked into this in June 2005, which is why I have not changed the article.

213.249.134.66 17:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC) Graham Jenkins

I changed it to this: "Rails attempts to maintain database-neutrality, application portability over different database systems, and usability of pre-existing databases for Rails application development as much as possible, though due to different feature sets of the RDBMSes, it is not completely guaranteed by the framework alone." I hope this is not too discouraging or negative in tone. I'm not a complete and utter Rails expert, but I think Rails/ActiveRecord is pretty much, pulledouttahat, 95% compatible what comes to the "common ground" of databases, it's the corner cases that give it trouble (or any framework, for that matter). And of course it's primarily geared toward users of MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQLite who get headache from Fancy Features in Big Boy Databases. =) And note the important bit "by framework alone"; Maybe the feature wasn't implemented by the Rails devs, but it doesn't mean it can't be implemented by others. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 15:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

If by "no default values based on functions," you mean there's no way to say "if this value is this when the record is retrieved, it should be this instead," you can absolutely do this with an after_find callback. Because of performance issues related to the callback, however, it remains mostly undocumented for the time being. Misogynist 00:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

mod_ruby?

Does anyone know exactly what issues Rails has with Apache mod_ruby? A lot of folks seem to recommend NOT to use mod_ruby with Rails, or any other thing at all. I have never used it - just a bunch of gut-feeling hearsay, or are the gotchas documented somewhere? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 14:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

see mod_ruby — HenryLi (Talk) 17:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 12:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

The documentation for the current Rails states Runs on top of WEBrick, Mongrel, CGI, FCGI, and mod_ruby , which leads me to the question of said problems still persist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.245.1.1 (talk) 12:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but if it's making the leap from "Ruby runs on multiple servers" to "therefore, mod_ruby must suck", that is illogical. Also, there have indeed been big improvements in the past two-and-a-half years. See "Passenger", for example. Can you clarify what you are saying/asking? Josephgrossberg (talk) 12:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I just thought that the statement in the documentation seems to indicate that there are currently no mod_ruby-specific problems... My question is basically just "Does it make sense / would you recommend using mod_ruby with rails now as opposed to two years ago?". So I was making the leap from "The documentation says that Rails runs on multiple servers, among them mod_ruby," to "which probably doesn't suck because there was no mention of problems in the documentation."

Thanks for the mention of Passenger, I will probably use that instead of mod_ruby.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.245.1.1 (talk) 08:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

full-stack??

It isn't clear what full stack means at all from the article, nor is it particularly easy to find out what it means using google. In fact, using google it almost appears that "full stack" is more of a marketing term than anything else. I'd be inclined to remove "full stack" from the article until either a full stack article is written or, at the least, the Ruby on Rails article explains what full stack means.

I was confused about this a ways back, a full article seems reasonable to me. The general idea of full stack is "collection of independently produced code" (farmer's market, baker, butcher, fish market, etc) vs. full stack - "all-in-one solution" (supermarket). Samsm 02:30, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep. I came here to say the same thing. I do a bit of work on some other articles and came here today to see what RoR was, and that full stack term is just thrown in there. It might mean something to people familiar with it, but it shouldn't be in the intro.Pizzamancer (talk) 04:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ruby on Rails and Willy on Wheels?

Any relations between the two? Any other words/phrases like "XXX on XXXs"? Yao Ziyuan 08:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I just have to ask: how many people thought this was a Willy on Wheels creation? I did...:-)--AK7 13:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Ruby is Willy's spouse :) 67.180.161.183 (talk) 03:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You guys are like Cramer on Crack! 124.171.159.105 (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Acronyms...?

No where, that I can find, on the RoR homepage or readme's does "DRY-COC" appear. While DRY and COC are part of RoR's philosophy, there is no reason to combine them other than to make a joke...so my question is, is this vandalism/joke or did I miss this "DRY-COC" thing somewhere?

DRY-COC? WTF?

I've heard "DRY" as an acronym of "Don't Repeat Yourself" pretty often, though I've never heard of COC and especially not "DRY-COC". --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 08:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

CoC => Convention over Configuration. It is a well-used acronym in the rails community, but obviously not in the DRY-COC context!

Links = Advertisement

The examples section has become a list of adds (inbound links) for the sites in question.

I'd suggest replacing the whole section with a link to Rails Wiki - Real World Usage except the Rails Wiki is in a semi-constant state of spam wreckage. Samsm 02:39, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree.

Name

How about some info on how it got to be called Ruby on Rails? --24.249.108.133 23:21, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Popularity

RoR was released as an open source project 9 months ago, and now is packaged with OSX and is a preference if not requirement for every job listing I see. Will someone discuss, in the history section, where the unparalleled frenzy came from and why? -Mrcolj 14:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Links to other frameworks

In the article on Django I've been in the habit of removing "see also" links to other frameworks, on the grounds that they're redundant with the much more complete link to the frameworks category which appears there, here, on the TurboGears article, etc., etc. I've argued for the same in the talk page for the article on TG, though I don't feel as comfortable removing them there. And now I'll argue for it here, though I won't remove them unless there's a consensus to do so.

So... given that all these articles already have a link to the full frameworks category list, is there a reason to pull out specific frameworks for special attention (and, over time, such lists tend to grow to resemble the category list) when that information's already available through the category link? Ubernostrum 04:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree -Roger Pack

I do not agree -- The purpose of the "see also" section as it is used in most Wikipedia pages usually gives links that put the article's subject in context. Therefor there aught to be some link in this section to other frameworks, even if its only a list of other frameworks rather than individual ones. It would also be helpful to have some comparison of these frameworks in terms of functionality and popularity. Unless you are already convinced that Ruby is the best framework out there, this would be one of the main pieces of information a user would want to know. This article is wholly lacking in any such contextual information. I have therefor added a "List of web application frameworks" to the "See also" section. --Betamod 22:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriatre level of abstraction and assumed expertise for an encyclopedia article

The title says it all.

This article suffers from the experts-only perspective. It refers to too many highly specialized concepts that are unexplained or poorly connected to the other parts of the article, or to the article's referents.

Too many gratuitous assumptions are made about what the reader already knows or is expected to know. This is more in tune with a breakout session discussion at a computing conference vs. an explanatory article for an encyclopedia that is supposed to make topics accessible to the wider audience. While this kind of problem is sometimes unavoidable when discussing computing topics, and pervades computing-related texts, a more explanatory and descriptive approach is called for in this article.

I'm entirely agree --Charlesknight 20:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Me too. I am a not a programmer, but wanted to find out about Ruby on Rails because people I work with use it. But the article was too abstract to let a non-insider understand what RoR actually does or how it differs form other software managmeent systems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robertekraut (talk • contribs) 23:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

Can you be more specific about what parts you found too technical? Josephgrossberg 02:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I had the same reaction. I think I can explain. The text of major sections of the article consists not just of technical details but in fact a whole series of jargon terms and product names strung together in barely grammatical fashion, with no explanation at all. (E.g. "Mongrel was generally preferred over WEBrick at the time of writing, but it can also be run by Lighttpd, Abyss, Apache, nginx (either as a module - Passenger for example - or via CGI, FastCGI or mod_ruby)"; "Ruby on Rails is also noteworthy for its extensive use of the JavaScript libraries Prototype and Script.aculo.us for Ajax. Ruby on Rails initially utilized lightweight SOAP for web services; this was later replaced by RESTful web services".) These sections seem to serve only as technical references for people looking for very specific details of implementation under very specific circumstances. This is of questionable utility in a Wikipedia article, I think. But worse than that, they are simply incomprehensible other than to people who don't need any explanation, and in fact only want specifically-detailed technical references. Nowhere does the article explain in general terms: (a) what RoR is; (b) what it is used for; (c) what makes it different from other examples of its class of entity (i.e., Web scripting languages) or why you would choose it instead of another; or (d) what in general its functions, and especially its unique functions or methods, are. I agree with the suggestion above that this could be put in a separate section without removing the technical detail below, but I don't see that detail as either appropriate (list-loving geeks may disagree) or inherently clear (undebatable).

I don't find parts too technical, just too vague. The gist of the article is that 'Ruby on Rails is a web application framework ... to increase the speed and ease of web development. ... Uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. ... Provides out-of-the-box scaffolding. ... Extensive use of the Javascript libraries Prototype and Script.aculo.us. ... Guiding principles ... include "Don't repeat yourself" ... and "Convention over configuration.' Reading this doesn't give me much insight into what this framework is, what the contrasting set of frameworks are, and how this one differs from others. --Robertekraut

Disagree. A separate part of the article near the top should give a more user friendly overview, but keep the detail below it - it is a good collection of information that would allow someone to decide whether to use RoR and compare to other languages (and this is probably this article's main use, so without the detail much of its usefulness would be gone). Wikipedia is altering what an encyclopaedia is thought of as being anyway.

em..no.. Wikipedia is and always has been intended to be a general readers encylopedia. the sort of detail you are talking about belongs on a rubyonrailswiki. --Charlesknight 12:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. It is impossible to discuss any technical topic without using technically appropriate jargon. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner-Seitz_cell. See how many non-Chemistry students can read that one and come across happy. How about this instead for the article: "Ruby on Rails is a great computer technology that makes stuff go faster. Smart computer people build pretty web pages with it." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.158.226.161 (talk) 21:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

Is sad when I see people demanding an article to be simpler, simply because they don't understand it. I've often came across this in mathematics articles. But what everybody has to realise is that it is essential for a technical topic it contain some degree of technical language in it. Often if you make an article simple enough for the "Average Joe" to understand it the people who do come from a technical background will find the article to be superficial and overly long. Or in other words, saying a lot of nothing at all. Technical language is there for a purpose, it is to express more complex ideas and at the same time idea do it more concisely as well. If you are having trouble with understanding an article maybe you should consider it isn't meant for you to understand. If this offends you, or you really really do want to understand the article then understand that it will require some work on your part to understand it. After all, would you expect to explain even half of atomic physics to the average person on the street in only five minutes? Of course not, it will take them years of learning to get their head around the fundamentals. However, help is at hand for you the reader of this fine wikipedia. Thanks to the prolific linking between articles it is easy to dig a little deeper into a topic, and also to take a few steps back. If the article is too hard for you, look at the terms you don't understand that are linked to other pages and read them. Likewise check out the "See Also" section and the associated categories, all of these will help get you up to the level you need to understand the article. Mathmo ^Talk 00:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Technical language necessarily presupposes a background of technical knowledge and experience. Wikipedia is a general-interest publication, and its articles should be comprehensible without specialized background. As there is only one entry for each subject, the RoR entry should not be exclusively for the benefit of people with technical background, providing information that is readily available from technical sources. At the very least, a clear and comprehensible explanation for the non-specialist should be minimal expected content; filling the rest of the page with jargon is always an option for those so inclined. And, if "makes stuff go faster" is the only way someone can think to explain the issue, perhaps the explanation should be written by someone else, but the inability to write a clear and usable explanation should not be a reason for excluding one.

Ideally an encyclopaedia would cater for a number of audiences with differing levels of background knowledge. Often it helps to have a relatively undemanding summary followed by detailed elaboration (and when I say 'summary' I don't have in mind the same kind of concise abstract as used in e.g. mathematical articles). That detailed elaboration may get necessarily technical but in this case, Wikipedia can help with its Wiki links. If all articles were written this way, readability would benefit significantly. Meeprophone (talk) 18:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with this argument. I am not technically incompetent, programatically impaired, or an "Average Joe". After reading the opening paragraphs of this article, I have no clue what Ruby on Rails is, or what it does. I came here because I assumed that there would be a good, clear, general description of what it does, what it is for, and how it does what it does. S Schaffter (talk) 05:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It's worth noting that this Talk section was originally started when the website had actual code in it, etc.: old version. Are you saying that it's hard to find the information you want because the article is too technical or because the non-technical summary is lacking? Josephgrossberg (talk) 11:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It is exactly that: there is no non-technical summary that would allow a person not already versed in Ruby on Rails to understand what it is. I don't want the article to be dumbed down. I just want to know what the article is about.S Schaffter (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Action Pack

What is the reason behind Action Pack being redirected here? There is a TV programming block called Action Pack which is now under Universal TV's Action Pack. Should Action Pack be an disabig. page or the programming block be there with an disablink. Spshu 20:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment from Reldev

Agreed. However, it is certainly a feather in the cap of Rails, and certainly an indicator of its viability, to highlight the projects, commercial projects and university endeavors undertaken in rails. That's how the entry was initially and why it expanded. It is unfair to Rails to only list a handful. We (FiveRuns) were put on the list by someone other than ourselves due to our support of RoR. BTW, are you involved in the project (RoR) in some capacity)? Your opinion would be appreciated. Thanks, Steven Smith, CEO, FiveRuns

I have no interest in Ruby on Rails at all - I have an interesting in building an General readers Encylopedia. Why does a general readers encylopedia require more than 2 or 3 examples of it's use ? Indeed a case can be made that it requires no examples of it's use - most of the other software articles we have don't have them. --Charlesknight 18:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Can someone rewrite this whole article?

It's hard to imagine that sentence-by-sentence edits are going to help this article very much. A full rewrite is in order. I've read quite a lot of tutorials on RoR, and many of them are really very good. So is the "Agile" book, which is the bible for RoR. Given the availability of such resources, it could be argued that this RoR page could be shortened to a paragraph with a few links to the outside web. (Certainly, the page should not be extended into a tutorial or a users manual ... these exist already, and RoR is complicated enough that a mini-tutorial or mini-manual is probably not realizable.)

The reasonable thing to do may be to delete almost all of the content and to write or encourage a very short, largely untechnical, replacement. This is a dramatic step, and it has the feel of aggression, so I guess nobody wants to do it. But, for those who would argue against it, I encourage asking the question: who is served by the present content?

The warning flag regarding the obscurity of this page is accurate. --Dankelley 14:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been doing incremental edits precisely because I think a near-total rewrite is very aggressive. I, personally, would be happy to replace everything from "Guiding Principles" to "Other Technical Notes" with a few paragraphs, but I'm afraid I'd get flamed for it. I suppose I could just go ahead an take a crack at it. Josephgrossberg 16:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The article is improving, as you are doing these deletions I see today. I can't see why anyone would flame improvements to an article flagged as this one is. BTW, there seems to be little need to list the release dates at that top section, and the text is quite off-putting with such details being listed. --Dankelley 18:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

*sigh* Okay, I suck at writing, and whoever deleted my crap is probably a hero. However, I'd like to ask one thing: Who is the current truncated version serving? Here's some of my suggestions:

• We don't really need a version log (Wikipedia is not a changelog anyway), unless we document what major changes happened. Simply listing "Version 1.2 was released in January 18, 2007" makes me just ask "Mighty swell, now what the heck was so remarkable about version 1.2"?
• In current version, this doesn't really tell a whole lot about what's so remarkable about it. MVC? Yawn, every enterprise framework does that. Encourages best practices? Yawwwwn, that's what your boss ordered. Scaffolding? In the production phase no one's going to run a website based on scaffolding, it's not a major selling point. Ajax and Javascript? Everyone does that nowadays.

In the present state, this article tells neither your boss or the corporate coder who ultimately picks the framework why Rails is any good or what makes it remarkable. Some of the technical details and examples are needed, like it or not. Just my opinion, of course... --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 20:08, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This entry is supposed to be a brief summary of what Ruby on Rails is, for your average reader. Wikipedia is not the appropriate venue for a product review; this is an encyclopedia. I don't think it's appropriate for Wikipedia to make the case for why it's "remarkable." Remember: NPOV. I will, though, remove the version history; I agree with you and Dankelley that it is too lengthy. Josephgrossberg 21:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

First, forgive me for some stern words that follow - I'm only trying to think what's best for the article. Articles are supposed to describe what makes things so special. It's absolutely not in conflict with NPOV. ('''William Shakespeare''' was a [[person]]. {{stub}} (This article is a stub. You can help not upset the delicate balance between fact and controversy by not expanding it.)) I'm not saying we're a full-on web framework shopping site; I'm just saying that just reciting random, generic details doesn't make a good article, and people who are foolish enough to trust Wikipedia as a guide to frameworks that people have actually used for some things are going to be disappointed with this article. ('''William Shakespeare''' was a [[person]]. Like most enterprising people, he was equipped with two [[nostril]]s. He was highly [[literacy|literate]]. {{stub}}) In its current state this article suffers from the software equivalent of WP:HOLE. Would you prefer Tetris article to boil down to "It's a puzzle game where you move blocks around and they vanish too"? Is the current explanation of the game's utterly contrived history confusing or excessive?
And think of it this way: Exactly how does the article, in its current state, justify its existence? It's exactly in the state where some poor user might slap an AfD on it: "This is appears to be Just Another Framework, it has a bit advertisatory intro, and the article itself doesn't have any claims of it meeting WP:SOFTWARE, all references are blogs and wikis." ...followed by a landslide-yet-not-so-speedy keep only because there's indeed tons of evidence, it's just not in the article. In it's current state, the article doesn't explain how it's different from Leethaksor's Set of Extremely Messy PHP Scripts Toolkit 0.01. Except, perhaps, it's spelled correctly throughout. And it says it's actually in 1.2 phase. Wow, as if version number is of any evidence. In conclusion, please please make people care. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 00:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I have no good answer to your challenge, because I think the success of Rails is debateable. For example, ActiveRecord (a cool object-relational mapper, with some nice hooks and syntactical sugar) isn't anything that Django lacks. Same goes for MVC, as you note above. Many of the Java frameworks are years older. And others have features that RoR lacks, such as Zope's (blech) fine-grained security. Personally, I think Rails benefitted from: the backing of a cool company, with cool people and cool sites; auspicious timing (coinciding with the Web 2.0 hype); a good (i.e. non-Java) language. But that's speculation, not fact. In any case, I've started a "talk" section below, to continue this thread. Josephgrossberg 00:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I just read the "What is Ruby on Rails" section of this article, and I still have no idea what it is, or what the "Rails" part is. I support any pressure to rewrite this article, because it's not very informative right now. 70.191.234.63 (talk) 01:43, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

What Makes Rails So Special?

Surely, it's worth mentioning the surge in RoR's popularity (it seems to be the "it" framework these days). How do we document/quantify this? More importantly, how do we objectively state why it is a big deal without violating NPOV or using "weasel words"? Josephgrossberg 00:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

sigh reminds me of a certain old poem about mending a bucket that had a hole. (involving plugging the hole, which involved cutting a twig, which required an axe, which required a grindstone to sharpen it, and a bucket to get water to the grindstone, but there was this little problem with the bucket that we forgot about...) Simple: let's explain what the components are and what they do. Hopefully with a little bit less words and jargon than I used. The text should be simple enough for newbies to follow and they see What It Is, and smart enough to be informative to experts who see What It Does. That's how you objectively explain what is so great about something. The only thing that was wrong with the old version is that it probably dwelt too much on the little details. We can leave illustrative examples to sub-articles, in the rare event there will be them.

Part two, obviously, would be to document what people have said about the thing. Didn't Rails win some awards or something? (Or was that just 37signals?) One could take a look at press coverage and list some of the books that have been written on the subject. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 18:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

One of the biggest factors in the hype about Rails, I think, was the Build A Blog in 15 minutes video. This was the first time that I had encountered a software product being "sold" in this way -- that is, you really *had* to watch the video, there was little in the way of supporting text on the site. And it was undoubtedly a very effective way to demonstrate the power and ease of Rails. Other projects have now copied the principle (I don't know if Rails was really the first to do it, but there can't have been many before as it could only have worked once enough people had broadband).

To answer the question, what makes Rails so special that people are prepared to learn a new programming language in order to use it, the answer is that the emphasis on "convention over configuration" makes it possible to do a lot with almost zero code, and therefore without actually knowing much Ruby. Basically you get a lot of reward for a very little effort, which makes the learning curve seem shallower at first. Of course, after the initial buzz, you soon find that you do need to know more and the curve's true steepness becomes apparent, but by then many people have started to appreciate Ruby's clean syntax and want to go deeper. I came to it after being a Perl programmer for 10 years and seeing the shortcomings of that language's object-orientation syntax graphically laid bare by Catalyst. Rails/Ruby was a breath of fresh air.

Maybe there are other WAFs out there that are just as good. I've never looked at Struts because I dislike Java, but Rails was almost certainly named in homage to Struts so maybe there are similarities. --Quaestor23 10:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hosts

Shouldn't wikipedia lost places to host your rails-site? (From Spiken)

I don't know that it's appropriate for an encylopedia article. Maybe an external link to a site listing hosts, instead of putting it inline in the article? Josephgrossberg 16:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest that a list of hosts doesn't belong here. Such a list belongs on the RoR site, where it can be kept up to date by experts, and where it sits alongside the RoR documentation. I'm also a little uncomfortable with wikipedia providing free advertising for some selected companies. And, finally, it seems to me that people looking up RoR are likely to also look up Django, and so I think the two pages will be compared by wikipedians. Well, the Django site doesn't list hosts, and this makes the present listing stand out ... negatively, in my personal view. --Dankelley 16:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion on see also section

I'm not an expert in this subject, but may I suggest the inclusion of Catalyst (software) to the see also section? Perl is still an important language to consider for web applications and deserves a representative there, and I would further submit that Catalyst is the most important Perl framwork to date. --Pkchan 09:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Pkchan: Perl has been very important in the development of the web (IMHO, far less so in the past five years) but there is very little buzz about Catalyst. Is that particular product noteworthy enough, or just the best MVC offering among obscure Perl offerings? Josephgrossberg 21:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how do you measure noteworthiness or obscurity, but from this listing it is used by a number of web applications such as del.icio.us, EditGrid, Vox among others. --Pkchan 05:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The "See Also" section could soon get out of hand if we start adding frameworks in other languages to it, but I do think Struts and Catalyst should be mentioned. Maybe a Category box is called for? Quaestor23 10:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I think a category box would be a great idea, for MVC web frameworks. Josephgrossberg 13:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Pkchan: I believe you are conflating Perl sites and Catalyst ones (for example, by including del.icio.us in that list). I'm not denying that that the Perl language is significant, I'm questioning whether or not any of its MVC frameworks are noteworthy. Why Catalyst and not Mason? Why not Jifty? And, before you know it, we have 50 "see also" links. AFAIK, that section isn't supposed to be a comprehensive list; it's supposed to provide a few examples of the most similar and/or significant projects. Josephgrossberg 13:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Forget it; I just added a link to the list of frameworks; that seems like the most neutral compromise. Josephgrossberg 14:11, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure your accusation of "conflating" is fair or justified: you asked for proof of noteworthiness (or disproof of "obscurity"), I provided the facts, and it's now "conflation". Having said that I agree with your compromise; I guess you're asking essentially the same question as I did: if Symphony, why not Catalyst? And it would be fair to all if none is listed here. --Pkchan 02:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess you are right with Symphony. What I meant -- and perhaps I phrased this poorly -- was that Perl's success isn't the same thing as the success of Perl MVC tools. Apologies. Josephgrossberg 13:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Lead section

This article is really underdeveloped and needs a lot of work. The lead section is not long enough. Please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LEAD for more info on this. There are other problems with the article but lets get the lead fixed up first. I have tagged this article.--220.237.166.156 00:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you point to a tech article that you think has a good lead? Josephgrossberg 04:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Sure check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_Framework and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform%2C_Enterprise_Edition and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML--220.237.166.156 15:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks for the examples! I will read them over and think about how we can better describe Rails without getting too technical. Josephgrossberg 18:34, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The lead section also fails to mention how the "Rails" part of the name originated. It only explains the origin of "Ruby" indirectly, by following the link to Ruby (programming language). —Quicksilver^{T @} 19:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

How did Rails become part of that name? Is it a reference to the scaffolding? Josephgrossberg 20:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added a bit more, what I would consider important, information to the introductory paragraph. I don't think it reads as well as it could do though. I imagine the article will grow in future to give more information in the body of the article (there is very little right now) on the extra topics I've included in the intro. Johnnykimble 20:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Adding More Projects

Sorry - I added the Elastic Server On-Demand site and was trying to be informative. I am biased, I just thought that the fact that it is a pretty nice Rails-based system AND it lets you do something interesting with Rails was fun. I would still say editorial comment aside that if the goal is to show reasonably large scale real world projects then Elastic Server On-Demand is a valid reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.66.168.244 (talk) 19:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the goal was to show a sampling of the Rails projects out there, and not a comprehensive list. Honestly, I'm not sure about the best criteria for compiling that list of sites, though. :/ Josephgrossberg (talk) 17:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

How about the NASCAR website, it built in rails.Uaflyer (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have documentation of this? Is it just Community.NASCAR.com? Josephgrossberg (talk) 23:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I think we should definitely add Twitter, which just hit Alexa #232 in the US and is now the highest-traffic Rails site out there. (The list of projects says not to add anything without talking here.) DumpButter 19:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Twitter is a worthy addition. Thanks for commenting on the Talk page; I think you're the first one to follow that guideline (self included). Josephgrossberg 19:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't heard any objections, so I went and added it. Josephgrossberg 19:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Matchbin.com is a worthy addition (I am a contractor for Matchbin). Matchbin has been on rails for a year now and is a very high traffic site. there are now hundreds of partner sites running on matchbin's technology ( which is built on rails). User:timcharper 15:32, 16 April 2007 (Mountain Standard Time)

Why don't you create a Matchbin wiki page first? Josephgrossberg 19:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

good plan - User:timcharper 18 May 2007

Dailykos version 4, which should roll out sometime during the fall of 2007. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/14/184757/416 dKos has about 600 000 hits per day.

An IP address just added justin.tv without discussing it here, but it appears to me that it's a notable enough project to include based on the media coverage referenced there. IMO, it's probably fine to include any project notable enough for its own Wikipedia page, and if the list gets too long we can split it out into its own article. JavaTenor 03:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'm gonna alphabetize and put a better description, though. Can we confirm that Justin.tv uses Rails, though? This job opening seems to imply it. Josephgrossberg 13:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

After reading this discussion, I went ahead and added Blurb.com to the list (it also has its own wiki page. The site run on RoR and is a pretty interesting example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.99.3.162 (talk) 20:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and added mojohelpdesk.com to the list. It's a pretty good example of a useful app that serves small business and compete against the bigger guys. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.244.126.158 (talk) 14:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

What makes it a *noteworthy* Rails site? That it's "useful"? That it "serves small business"? That sounds like a pretty weak case. Josephgrossberg 19:00, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

What about a section for Ruby on Rails job sites? Like http://www.rorjobs.com

In an encyclopedia article? No. Josephgrossberg (talk) 13:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Significance? Impact?

What this article is missing is a section on the significance or impact of Ruby on Rails. Why does Ruby on Rails matter? What is its sphere influence? These kinds of questions. Right now, the article has nothing about why Ruby on Rails is notable enough to warrant an encyclopedia article or why anyone should even care about Ruby on Rails. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about the subject, so if someone could step up to the plate, it would be much appreciated. --The Wild Falcon 12:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Even the brief article in the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia contains this sentence: "Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an open source application framework for Ruby that is widely used for writing Web applications." This article (and the article on Ruby itself) give no indication as to whether these are just software projects that no one uses, or if they are actually popular in any sphere of technology (like writing web applications). The layman who comes here wants to know why Ruby on Rails is important. --Westwind273 (talk) 18:27, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

From a strictly WP:Notability point of view, RoR gets a fair bit of coverage in the trade press (see here for a random example. Books have been published on the subject. I believe there are also notable web sites built on RoR. For example, RoR was used in the construction of twitter (I'm not sure what the current status is). I'm not an RoR expert or aficionado, but I've heard of it over and over. I would have been fairly disappointed if there hadn't been an article about it.

The "Significance and Impact" section, OTOH, needs major work, if indeed it needs to be there at all. -Dmh (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

how to write program?

myself omkar sonawane from India.I want to ask u that how to write programs in this ROR?is ther any spaecial compiler for ROR? Thank U............... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.162.92.72 (talk) 06:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The Links or Advertisement Debate

I've compiled a list of Rails links that I enjoy referencing and thought I would add them to this page. However, it seems that more and more people use wikipedia to SEO their site and I don't want to start a snow ball effect.

The current links are solid. For example, Railcast is one of my favorite podcasts and probably the best Rails podcast available. I for one feel that links to such great RAILS sources should be on the site. Adding my list of links seems like a double edged sword though. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MoeNaqvi (talk • contribs) 13:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for being considerate enough to discuss it first. I recommend you put those links on your blog, or the like, because they are one person's *opinion* of the best/most useful Rails links and Wikipedia is not a linkfarm nor a directory. Josephgrossberg (talk) 12:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Hopefully this will set a precedent. --MoeNaqvi (talk) 12:18, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I added a handful of RoR examples that were deleted by Josephgrossberg. I don't consider a list of highly esteemed websites using RoR to be a linkfarm/directory. Actually, when I read about a (to me) new technology, one of the things I'm most interested in is who's currently using that technology. I shouldn't need to go to somebody's blog to learn that. All the RoR example sites I mentioned have high PageRanks/Alexa ranks.ZingFu (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, "link farm" was too harsh a term. But the question is -- where do you draw the line? If you include those sites, why not one more? And then one more after that? Also, it's consistent -- Django, Merb, Drupal, Symfony, Spring, Struts, Tapestry, etc. don't have a list of "sites using X" in their articles either. Josephgrossberg (talk) 11:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Also Django, Drupal etc. should have a short section leading to examples of practical uses - for the reasons I mentioned above. Where to draw the line? Well, I actually happen to trust the community of WP editors to do that. It works so well on several other pages so why shouldn't we be able to handle it here?ZingFu (talk) 05:14, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

DRYCoC?!

Are you serious? RoR's 2 principals are DRYCoc?! no thanks, I'll stick to my php libraries thank you very much.

What does this have to do with the Wikipedia article? Josephgrossberg (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Advertisement tag

It could not fail: someone had to insert the obnoxious tag

"This article or section is written like an advertisement."
"Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view."

After thoroughly reading the article a third time, I honestly cannot find any infringement of the NPOV policy. I also cannot find any statement that deviates from objetivity, truth, or the basic facts. I wonder, How to write statements describing a subject matter in order to suit the tastes of several self-appointed 'critics' who have embarked on the noble mission of tagging, tagging, and tagging everything they come across, without ever stopping to add any valuable materials of amendments/corrections to existing texts? Tall order, no doubt. I'm removing the tag, and I'm inviting its 'author' to prove what the tag accuses the article of. Regards, --AVM (talk) 16:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe the user had different intent and just wasn't familiar with a more applicable tag? I'd be interested to hear their case because I've seen appropriate uses of the "advertisement" label, and this isn't one of them. Josephgrossberg (talk) 00:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. This article very much reads as an advertisement. Deserved or not, RoR has a reputation for enthusiasm outweighing substance and this article does nothing to dispel that impression. NPOV would require considerable editing and a bona fide examination of extant and readily-available criticism of RoR - performance, documentation, standards, database locking, threading, procs vs blocks, etc. As it stands the article is meaningless. Cosmo7 (talk) 22:13, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Standards, threading and procs vs blocks are Ruby issues, not Rails issues. The complaints about sparse documentation have died down considerably from, say, two years ago. Furthermore, I don't see "criticism" sections in competing frameworks' articles, so I don't believe that's absolutely necessary (though the anti-Rails backlash/jealousy could merit a mention). Josephgrossberg (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Stalking me and editing my talk page because I have a different opinion than you is inappropriate. By definition, for the article to have NPOV it should be equally useful to proponents and opponents of Rails. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cosmo7 (talk • contribs) 18:28, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

A user's page is the appropriate place to leave a message: "User talk pages are a way (other than email) in which others may contact a specific editor." -Wikipedia:User_talk_page I have removed the personal remark I made, though; I agree it is not appropriate. Josephgrossberg (talk) 12:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The template was added by 24.57.150.2 in this edit, in case anyone wishes to discuss this directly with the contributor involved. Michael Slone (talk) 02:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I definitely think the Technical Overview section reads like an advertisement. Language like "noteworthy" is clearly biased and does not belong in an encyclopedia. MykellM (talk) 21:29, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms

I just added a criticism section:

• There was already a critic in the Recent Developments paragraph, about Rails breaking backward compatibility (however we should find a source for that, there is none)
• an older critic about Rails trademark was deleted long time ago, and I think it was worth mentioning
• also (but I did not add it yet), there was a lot of buzz more than one year ago about Twitter having scalability problems because using Ruby, but it was more a Rails problem (see that I'm not saying that there was really a performance problems with Twitter using Rails, just that a lot of sources said that at that moment). I did not add it for now, but I think its worth mentioning in this paragraph. See for example this interview of one Twitter developer (OK, its in April 2007) [2], or this one here: [3]. I'm not slapping Rails, I'm only saying that performance / scalability problems are (real or imagined) problems that are discussed in a lot of sources.

Hervegirod (talk) 11:35, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for it, if it can be handled in an encyclopedic article and not just heresay and/or linking to blogs and essays grounded entirely in opinion -- i.e. "Rails sucks because I don't like XYZ aspect of it". What you wrote is fine, IMHO -- but is lack of backwards-compatibility really a big criticism of Rails? I don't find it to be much (any?) more of an issue than it is in other frameworks. Josephgrossberg (talk) 03:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

A little odd alternative article name

Just wanted to note that while typing "Ruby on" into WP search engine, one of the keywords I got was "Ruby_on_Iaails" which actually does forward to this article! so quick question..what's that about? Is that a common slang for RoR used anywhere, or just some funny move... --K.G. (talk)

Hmm. Looks like the order of events is this: Damian Yerrick created redirect "Ruby on Яails" way back in 2006 (with comment "someone lock this so Willy can't do anything bad" - naturally no one protected it =), and then, in March 2008, Eubot automatically created "Ruby on Iaails" as a "non-diacritic" redirect. In other words, cyrillic Я transliterated to Ia. (Curiously, the bot did not create "Ruby on Yaails". =) I was under the impression that Willy-may-his-axles-rust-in-peace-On-Wheels is long gone, nuked, stapled, spindled and carried to the junkheap behind the shed; maybe these should nowadays be nuked under CSD R3 (especially the "Iaails" redirect, because that's frankly something that no one is going to use). If no one else does this within a few days, I'll probably delete them, but not yet unless some people have something to add... --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 18:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Agile?

The sentence "It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology. . ." seems out of place, and a little bit OR. . . is there a source for this, or is it mere buzzword-associated between a popular framework and a trendy "development methodology"? Does something really, really bad happen if one tries to use RoR with a "non-agile" methodology? evildeathmath 14:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Concur. I have removed the mentioning --72.229.231.53 (talk) 09:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology that is used by web developers for rapid development.( cf. Rønn Jensen, Jesper (April 12, 2006). "Ruby on Rails as rapid prototyping tool". justaddwater.dk. Denmark. Retrieved February 2, 2010.).

The latter source is not valid, this is a blog post by an unknown developer (unknown AFAIK). Hervegirod (talk) 21:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Mongrel vs. Thin (Preferred Web Server)

This article contracts itself in that it initially claims that Mongrel is the preferred web server and later claims that Thin is preferred. Probably conflicting editors at work. Anyone know which is right? Perhaps there shouldn't even be a claim on which is preferred. Tweisbach (talk) 05:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

links removal

I have removed all but the official website link per WP:EL. All but one of the additional links can be found on the official homepage. There is no need to link to theother sites. Stop reverting. 16x9 (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with your interpretation of the policy. Those are links to good resources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.217.197.7 (talk) 09:22, December 13, 2009

That isn't an argument to keep them. the main site links to them and don't need to be linked here. 16x9 (talk) 20:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:EL seems pretty clear on this. "More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites." The blog is linked at the top of rubyonrails.org and the guides are right under documentation, so I removed those two. --skew-t (talk) 07:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

In Production

I removed the fact tags on most of the listed sites because they are already referenced by the citation at the beginning of the section (perhaps the cite should be repeated over the applicable items, as it does not apply to all of the sites). A later edit has tagged them all as "original research?" with an edit summary of "{{or}}". I'm wondering what is meant by this? The sites are referenced to rubyonrails.org, not the opinion of one or more editors here. --skew-t (talk) 02:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The source is bad. It is a primary source which is not a WP:RS. What is the point of the list in the first place? If the nytimes or another RS wrote an article and about a website/service and its use of ruby on rails I could see a sentence or two being added to the history section of the article but there is no need for a list of unverifiable websites that ruby on rails may or may not contribute anything to its success or failure. 16x9 (talk) 18:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the sites themselves would be the primary source in this case, rather than rubyonrails.org, but even so I don't think it would be original research as there is no editor interpretation, nor would that necessarily make it unreliable. It could use a better source, particularly one that makes some meaning of it, but that doesn't mean it is unverifiable. I didn't write it, but I think the purpose of the section is to show that there are prominent uses of Rails, showing notability among other things. I do agree it would be better in prose rather than a list bordering on trivia. --skew-t (talk) 06:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Inspiration for other frameworks

ASP.NET differs from ASP.NET MVC and I think that section have to be there. As well as I know some frameworks like Django and Groovy are inspired by ruby on rails and I'm not sure about ASP.NET MVC. ICEAGE (talk) 22:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any reliable, published sources that actually say that each of these 'were inspired by RoR'? if so, list them here and we'll all have a look and see if it's verifiable. --Nigelj (talk) 22:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

You can see the reference for Grails[4][5] and msdn mentioned that MVC in ruby on rails proved it and ASP.NET MVC confirmed it and I know Django is inspired by ruby on rails but I couldn't find any reference but if I found, write it here. ICEAGE (talk) 01:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Cakephp also is inspired by ruby on rails but I don't know my references are reliable or not/[6][7][8]. There some other frameworks like Catalyst, Symfony and ColdFusion on Wheels that mentioned in Model View Controller were inspired by ruby on rails. ICEAGE (talk) 01:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for listing other frameworks influenced by RoR, where verifiable, but I think the section as previously written is not the best way to do it; statements like "It was the simplicity and productivity benefits offered by this framework which prompted others to change. At some point rails was touted as the silver bullet in software engineering." aren't neutral and pretty hard to source in a meaningful way. A better way to go about it might be to add something like the "influenced" field shown at the top of several of the programming language pages (see Ruby (programming language) for an example, and list the other frameworks there.evildeathmath 14:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

We need to be careful too, to distinguish things influenced by the language Ruby, and things influenced by the MVC web paradigm. Neither of these is enough to say 'influenced by RoR'. --Nigelj (talk) 19:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

"on Rails"

I was hoping to find some mention in the article about the origin of the "on Rails" portion of the name. Was there any significance to it when RoR was named, or was it just "it sounds cool"? -- 140.142.20.229 (talk) 22:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I've always thought that was a metaphor using rail-based transportation to illustrate how the framework's "convention over configuration" and "opinionated software" principles directed users to follow a specific path of application development. I am unable to find a source verifying that inference, though (kinda hard to Google this). Josephgrossberg (talk) 03:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Someone on hacker news claimed it was a reference to lines of cocaine.

Ha, the answer is actually on this discussion page. Search for "struts". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.66.184.234 (talk) 04:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

That is hardly an authoritative answer. It is more speculation that anything else. It doesn't have a link to any references. While it does sound more plausible, we need a solid reference to point to. --Pchov (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

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What is Rail's place in the webpage programming ecosystem?

I've read quite a few blogs, articles, and comments about Ruby on Rails, and I still don't understand where it fits in the ecosystem. (I've done a good amount of programming, but not for webpages.)

1. could I just, if I wanted, use Ruby to do everything instead of using Rails?

2. if I use Rails, would I still use Ruby at all?

I'm starting to get the picture that I would still use Ruby for data manipulation and any non-trivial logic, and Rails would be in charge of putting it all on the screen. It seems that Rails just has a nice structured way to present everything, and eliminated a ton of manual or pre-packaged code to create the HTML and CSS.

Again, this is how it appears to me, and this was the section I was hoping to find in Wikipedia to clarify all this. Wikipequi (talk) 03:26, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

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Second reference in article is incorrectly formatted

Here is a cut and paste of the second reference in this article (in the infobox) that is not formatted properly, I couldn't locate it in the article to correct it:

{{cite web|https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2018/12/4/Rails-5-2-2-has-been-released/%7Cwebsite=Ruby on Rails|author=rafaelfranca|accessdate=2018-12-4|title=Rails 5.2.2 has been released!}

If anyone can help, please correct this, thanks. Neptune's Trident (talk) 00:24, 27 February 2019 (UTC)