I've jumped with gusto onto the Ruby on Rails bandwagon. For the non-programmers out there, Rails is a programming system that makes it really really easy to create spiffy websites that run on databases. I don't have the years of web-coding experience that all the other converts do, but I know different when I see it. In fact, I think I'm in the sweet-spot user base. Rails lowers the entry-barrier for web programming to speed-bump height, so that guys like me feel confident that they can whip up a web-based application during BART commutes. I'm working on my first from-scratch web application, and I'm doing it now because Rails is here now.
Scott Raymond writes a good bullet-pointed summary of why Rails is such a breath of fresh air. But it includes this sentence:
Like many Railsians, I started programming on the web (many years ago) as a PHP hacker of the worst sort: huge files of proceedural code, jumbled messes of include()s, inline SQL, and HTML.
Railsians? No no no. That can't be the word that's going around. We can do better than that. Users of trendy technologies need trendy collective nouns, and "Rails" is a word with potential. But it's gotta be established soon. Here are my nominations:
- Railiens (not to be confused with Raelians)
- Raeltors
- Railists / Railistics
- The Railsh (think "the Welsh")
- Railitives
I'll stop there. Now if only I could think of a name for the project I'm working on...