What's So Great About Rails?

OK, so now I guess I am becoming a "Rails Guy." At least, I have been doing some Ruby on Rails programming lately and am generally very impressed.

It is still Web programming, there are no major paradigm shifts here. However, Ruby on Rails is an example of how a lot of little things done right can really add up. Ruby is a fine scripting language, improving upon popular languages like Perl and Python. And Rails is an example of getting the little details of Web programming right. Rails is optimized (as I see it) for (1) Productivity and (2) Maintainability. The following are what I really like:

• The clean, simple ActiveRecord ORM layer.
• A full-fledged yet simple MVC that is easy to comprehend and get around in.
• Sensible defaults and very little configur-bation; "convention over configuration."
• A good job of making the most common tasks simple; the 80/20 rule.
• "rake migrate" is the coolest way to manage schemas that I have seen.

So, is Rails the answer to everything? Of course not, you won't find sweeping generalizations here. As always, it depends on *specific* requirements. Ruby and Rails are geared toward fast and simple development and maintenance. Java and JEE technologies generally have not prioritize these factors as highly as Enterprise requirements, e.g. massive scalability, security, etc. And I am not saying that one or the other stack is incapable of solving a kind of problem, rather that it is a matter or priorities, focus, and fit.

So I do like Rails a lot, I think it is probably the best solution for many small-medium sized webapps. But it is not necessarily a replacement for Java, especially in the enterprise. The trick is for decision-makers to weight their needs for big E Enterprise requirements against speed and simplicity.