Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kickstarter: rails.app

kickstarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 175 posts

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#91

Post by sanderjd »

blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

This is such an intriguing comment. I thought you were standing on reasonably logical ground (even if I disagree) until this part:

...What in the world is the difference?

If anything it makes more sense to fund work that is actually useful than work that is simply beautiful or interesting.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#92

Post by moe »

sanderjd wrote: post #90
moe wrote: post #74

As much as I like yehuda, he's tackling a non-issue here and I'm at a loss to understand how he even arrived at the project scope as he describes it. Installing Rails on a Mac is largely trivial. It's literally 5 shell-commands, depending on the current level of breakage of rubygems (but that's a different story). Write a tutorial in your blog if you really feel this is hard for newbies. The hard part is installing t…

As you pointed out, your problem and the problem he is trying to solve here are completely different. Your problem definitely exists, and lots of people are working hard on solving it, whether that means those working on improving chef and puppet themselves, or on other less flashy configuration management systems, or on new projects that are attempting to improve on the existing solutions in a more fundamental way.…

and even if it were only 5 it would be worthwhile to make it easier

Seriously?

1. Install XCode and homebrew

2. sudo brew install {postgresql,rbenv,ruby-build}

3. Close terminal. Open terminal.

4. mkdir proj && cd proj && rbenv install 1.9.2-p290 && rbenv local 1.9.2-p290

5. gem install rails && rbenv rehash

6. rails new foo

Honestly, we can argue if this was 5 steps or 8. We can also argue if 'rbenv rehash' should be necessary (I'm not even sure it really is, wrote that down from top of my head).

But if someone fails on these instructions that fit on a Post-It™ then they should overthink their ambitions towards a programming career.

And if they run into bugs during that procedure then these bugs must be fixed. Because this is (and should be) the canonical way to install a vanilla Rails on OSX.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#93

Post by 1qaz2wsx3edc »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #46
1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah, rather then funding a project to make Rails easier to install on OSX (because it's not with the plethora information guides and bootstrap scripts), why not tackle real problems like concurrency and websockets in Rails.

While I understand the frustration, wycats, like any other open source developer gets to pick his battles. Lowering the Rails entry bar is a good thing, making things simpler is a sign of maturity for a product. To address your bit about concurrency and websockets in Rails, people are working on the issue, see the talks given by Ilya Grigorik for example, concurrency will be coming to Rails at some point. And so will…

Agreed, but isn't this a good cause to fund to expatiate development.

A year or two back if you ask, "how do I built my bleeding edge web application" the answer normally was 'use Rails'. My point is the Rails has been sorely lagging behind other invitations.

This just feels like a waste otherwise.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#95

Post by nikcub »

tptacek wrote: post #77
blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

What this is is Yehuda Katz, who has built a reputation with contributions to open source products over many years, realizing that his market value is better than "kudos" on some website. The alternative to stuff like this is Yehuda Katz writing code for some startup that you will never see. Here's Katz finding a way to make a business out of writing open source... ... and this is a bad thing? What's wrong with you ?

Lots of companies hire people to work on open source projects. It is how most of it gets written. He could probably get a job where working on this is part of it in a heartbeat.

(not that I disagree with this project or method, I think he should do the same as what Google Appengine does with its installer - it is seriously awesome)

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#96

Post by aaronblohowiak »

toast76 wrote: post #81
blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

This is something that would be personally valuable for me. He could just as easily build this and sell it on the App Store; I'd buy it too. Instead I'll donate so you can get it for free. Who says OSS has to be all about altruism and self-sacrifice? Btw.. http://railsinstaller.org/ was funded by EngineYard... I'm not sure I see the difference?

railsinstaller is windows only.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#97

Post by jacobian »

blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here?

What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are you against the idea of companies letting their devs work on open source?

There's this attitude in the open source world that somehow developers getting directly paid for open source is evil. This is -- excuse me -- fucking bullshit. I can't think of anything better than the idea of developers getting paid to write open source software. We need to grow the hell up and understand that paying developers to write open sourced software is a good thing -- open source devs get money, and the community gets software. Again, who loses?

I don't use Rails, and I probably never will, yet I kicked in some money to help see this through. I can think of about a million worse ways I could have spent that cash.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#98

Post by ajacksified »

ericd wrote: post #21
ajacksified wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fairly recent OSX and a fairly recent Rails user, I had no trouble learning either. That is, except for Lion and XCode 4.2/4.3, which caused me about three lost days. 'rvm get head' and 'rvm install 1.9.3-head' fixed that, though.

I would say that that three lost days getting set up is a large, large problem for Rails, though.

Oh, absolutely - but don't confuse a Rails problem with a Ruby problem. It wasn't Rails causing problems, it was Ruby itself.

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#99

Post by wycats »

jacobian wrote: post #97
blhack wrote: post #72

Please excuse the language, but what the fuck is happening to our world right now? What the hell has happened to "I want to build something, so I'll build it"? Now you have to [1]pay $100 for the privilege of reading the mailing list for an open source project? And some guy needs $25,000 just to start it? Guys this is...not good. Can you imagine if apache's kickstarter never got funded? If the linux kernel's didn't?…

Let me get this straight: so a prolific, proven open source contributor makes some money, and the community gets a problem fixed. This is a bad thing? Who loses here? What if Yehuda's company gave him 25% of his time to work on open source - would that be different? He'd get that same $25k (or whatever), and the software would get built (and open sourced). Only difference I can see is the source of the money, so are…

Thank you. That is really nice :D

Re: Kickstarter: rails.app

#100

Post by sanderjd »

moe wrote: post #92
sanderjd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you pointed out, your problem and the problem he is trying to solve here are completely different. Your problem definitely exists, and lots of people are working hard on solving it, whether that means those working on improving chef and puppet themselves, or on other less flashy configuration management systems, or on new projects that are attempting to improve on the existing solutions in a more fundamental way.…

and even if it were only 5 it would be worthwhile to make it easier Seriously? 1. Install XCode and homebrew 2. sudo brew install {postgresql,rbenv,ruby-build} 3. Close terminal. Open terminal. 4. mkdir proj && cd proj && rbenv install 1.9.2-p290 && rbenv local 1.9.2-p290 5. gem install rails && rbenv rehash 6. rails new foo Honestly, we can argue if this was 5 steps or 8. We can also argue if 'rbenv rehash' should b…

Dude, take a step back and forget that you know this stuff already and do it professionally. That list is not easy and far from obvious, even for real programmers coming from other environments, let alone for actual programming beginners.

Your list is far from canonical even at this very moment and hasn't even been common for very long. To figure out your list, I have to:

1) know that homebrew is the "right" way to install software that rails depends on, rather than MacPorts or Fink, or the Mac app store, or download.com, and oh yeah, there is this thing called sudo, and I should install homebrew recipes using it, or should I??,

2) know that rbenv and ruby-build are things that exist and that they are competitors to RVM but are either more or less in vogue depending on who I talk to,

3) understand that rbenv doesn't just work in the current shell without closing and re-opening it,

4) know that the "right" version of ruby to use is 1.9.2-p290 (I have to know the patch-number?!) and that I need to install it and set it as my local version (wait, what does that mean, why do I need a local version?),

before I can get around to actually installing rails and using it.

Now, I could just blindly follow someone's list from a blog post (randomly chosen presumably, because the theory here is that I don't know enough about these things to make an informed decision). Maybe I would even get lucky and find a list that works properly with the version of rails that the official documentation is talking about, but it would still be a much better experience by far to go to the official rails site and be told: "hey, download this all-inclusive, up-to-date, guaranteed to work disk image straight from us!".

Post reply on HN