Merb 1.0 released

http://merbist.com/2008/11/09/merb-1-0-released/

by nickb • 18 years ago

35 16 18 years ago

markbao• 18 years ago

Any former Ruby on Rails developers want to share their experience switching to Merb?

Locke4• 18 years ago

I made one small demo app in Merb about a month ago -- so, slightly pre-1.0. Overall, it was a good experience and I intend to continue exploring Merb.

A few points:

* Not as much documentation... sometimes it takes a while to find the Merb equivalent of some Railsism. The interfaces for Merb are very similar to Rails, though, so usually just trying the equivalent is enough. The differences I encountered were usually improvements over the Rails approach, IMHO.

* Smaller community. So, fewer plugins, fewer examples, fewer HOWTOs, etc. Hopefully this will change. But if you're uncomfortable developing something without a ton of resources to leverage...

* More flexible. I used Datamapper instead of ActiveRecord, and was very happy to have a choice. I was also very happy with Datamapper itself. I'm not sure Datamapper is mature enough, yet, for large scale projects, but the future is bright.

Overall, I think Merb benefits strongly from the "hindsight is 20/20" adage. It takes the best of Rails and rethinks its shortcomings. Where Rails was more revolutionarly, Merb is evolutionary. I think the improvements are worth the trouble of learning another web framework. I intend to use Merb for any new projects I start.

My demo app is http://ifrotz.org -- not that it's at all enlightening in a Merb vs Rails debate.

davidw• 18 years ago

Thanks for the answer, but you only cite one advantage, that of flexibility. Surely there must be others?

kuniklo5• 18 years ago

I don't get it. One of the best things about Rails is that I don't have to pick and choose my components. I use what everybody else is using and I know that means it's likely to work and be reasonably well documented. Any small gains I might achieve by swapping out one layer of Rails are going to be more than offset by the extra complexity of my unique Merb environment.

DHH's arguments about "opinionated" software seem to have been lost on the Merb crowd.

Locke4• 18 years ago

This is great if you happen to love every design decision the Rails crew has made for you. If not...

I don't think Merb will replace Rails. I think, ultimately, the two appeal to different crowds. Too some extent, I hope people who are happy with Rails stay with Rails. Merb feels like it's more aligned with the Ruby community than the Rails community. If that makes any sense.

kuniklo5• 18 years ago

You're never going to love every decision made by the designers of any platform. The thing is, you're likely to make just as many missteps on your own. Every once in a while it's worth it to start with a clean slate but I don't think Rails is even close to that point yet.

gommm• 18 years ago

Actually, merb manages to still keep it rather simple even with the added choice... The different parts integrate well and you can still use the default merb stack if you want security...

I found rails to be really great for developing small applications but I find that any non trivial rails application start to have quite a few hack to get rails to play the way I want

kuniklo5• 18 years ago

I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on this a bit. I've build quite a few Rails apps so far and haven't found that to be the case myself.

mileszs• 18 years ago

I thought you may be interested in reading some of the bullet points contained in this post: http://merbist.com/2008/11/09/merb-1-0-released/

We can all live as one. It doesn't have to be "Merb versus Rails". It doesn't have to be a war.

kuniklo5• 18 years ago

Hopefully it won't be a war but it certainly is Merb versus Rails, at least if you're deciding what framework to build your website with.

jpcx012• 18 years ago

Sometimes DHH has some extremely stupid opinions. Such as his blog post about how "reusable apps" and "components" are not possible, even though Django is using them with overwhelming success.

I switched to Merb because of Slices. But Datamapper turned out to be an amazing upgrade from ActiveRecord. And I'm starting to love all the other little framework features (defer blocks in routes for example) that just don't exist in Rails.

jamongkad• 18 years ago

A little off-topic but whatever happened to Ramaze? It seemed to have so much potential....

Merb 1.0 released

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