For years I’ve honed my skills in PHP, developing best practices and even my own web framework. PHP is productive, but not particularly expressive. Worse, PHP culture makes real progress impossible; sure I can code around magic_quotes_gpc and objects passed by value, but why should I have to? On the other hand, I’m not interested in become a corporate J2EE or .NET sprocket, life’s too short. So what’s a self-respecting web developer to do?
The choice these days seems to be either Python or Ruby. Ruby got to me first, with its elegant syntax and (perhaps too) popular Rails framework. The verdict? Ruby is Perl done right, and Rails hits a big niche square on. I’m there.
Why darwinweb?
Everybody and their mother has a blog. It’s the web designer equivalent of street cred. I’m into Rails, but not running it, developing it. So instead of dropping another blue Typo blog on the scene, I’m dropping a green and orange one. Not Typo either. It’s proprietary, security through obscurity, popularity through charity, elegance through elephants, but not Web 2.0; you get the picture.
You’ll notice that darwinweb has no features (at least if you’re reading this in early November 2005). This is a calculated risk in release early and often experimentia using agile development. I picked up the Rails book a week ago and its all starting to click. Instead of the mythical general solution I’m writing what I need as I go with confidence that I can add the kitchen sink incrementally.
Embracing Subversion, Migrations and Switchtower will (hopefully) allow an organic development process that highlights Rails’ strength as a true rapid development platform. Hey I can dream can’t I?
Revision 2 CHANGELOG
This is rev2, the first actual Rails version of the site. This release only supports simple articles and a list of code revisions. Navigation is minimal. No RSS. No comments. No users. No search. No badges. No archives. Definitelyno archives.
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Welcome to darwinweb
My new training ground.
For years I’ve honed my skills in PHP, developing best practices and even my own web framework. PHP is productive, but not particularly expressive. Worse, PHP culture makes real progress impossible; sure I can code around
magic_quotes_gpcand objects passed by value, but why should I have to? On the other hand, I’m not interested in become a corporate J2EE or .NET sprocket, life’s too short. So what’s a self-respecting web developer to do?The choice these days seems to be either Python or Ruby. Ruby got to me first, with its elegant syntax and (perhaps too) popular Rails framework. The verdict? Ruby is Perl done right, and Rails hits a big niche square on. I’m there.
Why darwinweb?
Everybody and their mother has a blog. It’s the web designer equivalent of street cred. I’m into Rails, but not running it, developing it. So instead of dropping another blue Typo blog on the scene, I’m dropping a green and orange one. Not Typo either. It’s proprietary, security through obscurity, popularity through charity, elegance through elephants, but not Web 2.0; you get the picture.
You’ll notice that darwinweb has no features (at least if you’re reading this in early November 2005). This is a calculated risk in release early and often experimentia using agile development. I picked up the Rails book a week ago and its all starting to click. Instead of the mythical general solution I’m writing what I need as I go with confidence that I can add the kitchen sink incrementally.
Embracing Subversion, Migrations and Switchtower will (hopefully) allow an organic development process that highlights Rails’ strength as a true rapid development platform. Hey I can dream can’t I?
Revision 2 CHANGELOG
This is rev2, the first actual Rails version of the site. This release only supports simple articles and a list of code revisions. Navigation is minimal. No RSS. No comments. No users. No search. No badges. No archives. Definitely no archives.