An Open Letter for DHH from India

May 02, 2008
An open letter from India to Mr. David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails.
Posted by webreservoir at 14:49 - 7 comments
“”is this some sort of weird Indian joke?Anonymous Coward - May 03, 2008 01:14
“”I didn't get it either, but I didn't want to delete it.PeterCooper - May 03, 2008 02:14
“”I'm sorry, but by my reading they are asking DHH to leave Rails innovation for a while and work on hosting support.
A clear case of NMP (Not My Problem)... Hosting support for Rails is bad, but mod_rails is a start, and really not an issue for serious Rails deployers... (ie the majority of Rails core etc.)
I personally see greater 'problems' in the merb/datamapper developments... they have a lot of good ideas that could be merged back into rails... multi-threaded-ness being my major gripe (why should Rails lock on a file upload... it's the servers problem not rails')Adam Salter - May 03, 2008 04:09
“”@ Anonymous Coward
@ Peter

That Indian guy has lots of interesting points to be considered. Ruby community is now divided between frameworks, which are growing like mushrooms.

Rails will not be a monopoly any more. EngineYard is working more on Merb and DataMapper with good financial support that we all know. Jruby is now established and IronRuby on the way.

What will happen if Mod_rails does not work properly. How long do we need to depend on few hosting companies only... There are lot many points that guy has covered.

That Indian Guy wants the support in Rails Core about the hosting problem, since every one cannot be a Ruby or Rails Guru.

The Comments on that blog are also worth reading. The Ruby community is now really frustrated with Hosting Scenario.

@ peter

I still remember your blog on hosting scenario on www.rubyinside.com. That blog also had many frustrated comments on hosting and mod_ruby development.

Its time, you revise and develop that blog again and post it for better response.

I thought, i should write here since that Indian Guy was misjudged.

SoftMind.softmind - May 03, 2008 05:21
“”I don't get it because it makes exactly the same point a flurry of various blog posts already made several months ago and that DHH already replied to. He has already outlined that it's a problem that the hosts will need to take action on themselves.

In any case, there are now alternatives. There's mod_rails which people are having success with, and also my SwitchPipe which is getting a more boutique level of usage (and especially for non Rails apps).PeterCooper - May 03, 2008 10:00
“”I don't quite get this post either. I'm not sure if it's the broken English, or the actual content that confuse me.

Either way, I think the problem here is people are confusing Rails with Ruby. One is a framework, the other is a language.

Someone talked about how easy it is to deploy PHP based frameworks that look like Rails. It's not the framework that's easy to deploy, but rather the language, PHP. The same goes for Java, .Net, etc... It's the language people have figured out how to deploy easily, not the frameworks in those languages.

That's where things like Rack come in. It's trying to unify the interface to Ruby web apps, so they can be easily deployed. Ezra is already working on porting Rails to Rack, and other frameworks like Mack and Merb already use it.

I do agree that Ruby hosting, notice I didn't say Rails, is not as ubiquitous as PHP hosting, but that has as much to do with a lack of uniformed interfaces to Ruby web apps, as it does with Ruby being a fairly 'new' language for widespread web development. I've been using it for close to three years, and let me tell you three years ago, there was only a couple of hosts providing ANY Ruby support.

I truly feel that as a community we need to work together, and not force one man (DHH), to make deploying Ruby apps as simple as deploying PHP ones. In the meantime either pick another Ruby framework that supports Rack (Mack, for example), or use a host like EngineYard or SliceHost that will help you get the job done.markbates - May 03, 2008 12:29
“”Why is it always that if an "Indian" developer posts a comment, It "always confusing" or "it's the broken English" ?? We aka educated Indians code, develop, write and speak english better than most in the world...Trock - July 04, 2008 09:48
“”

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