Ruby on Rails

I was at a Ruby on Rails presentation last night, run by the Oxfordshire branch of the BCS. I was expecting great things, to be told how all our .NET and Java web apps were to be made obsolete overnight (or something like that).

Unfortunately, it wasn't all that it seemed cracked up to be. It looks lovely for bashing out quick sites, especially if you are designing the data model from scratch (and it's quite simple). However, as you try and do more complex things, then it gets exponentially harder. I think it was summed up by someone I was chatting to after the event, who said that Ruby on Rails is great as it's "Convention not Configuration" and once you learn the "Rules", then you can develop sites very quickly.

I don't know about you, but once I'm told that I have to work within rules, then that implies potential limitations. I don't want to hear what it can't do, I want to hear what it can do!

Apparently the next release forthcoming will perform better. Maybe this is a first step to making this snazzy technology ready for the Enterprise?