This would be brilliant way to fund new open source work. ☺
Kickstarter: rails.app
131–140 of 175 posts
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
You seem to forget that he has almost always be paid for his contribution: * Merb / Rails - EngineYard * Sproutcore / Ember - Strobe (and via contract work) I myself struggle with the concept of asking $25k to build what he wants to build. But at the end of the day what I think doesn't matter what I think or how many people disagree. If enough people agree with him and support him, then the project will happen. If yo…
"I myself struggle with the concept of asking $25k to build what he wants to build."
Are you of the opinion that people should only be paid to do things that they don't want to do?
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#133Please 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?…
I fail to understand why some programmers don't like to see other programmers get paid directly for their efforts.
If open source work is not paid for directly, it is paid for by corporations. Even when people do work in their 'spare time', it is being subsidized by the corporate job that puts food on their table.
Arguing against directly funded open-source is tantamount to arguing that developers should only be able to make a living working for a corporation.
There's nothing wrong with choosing to work for corporations, but what's wrong with having alternative economic mechanisms as well?
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#134JRuby will be in GSoC, and may also have a separate "summer of code" via an as-yet-unnamed benefactor. Perhaps we should just get Yehuda to mentor a student to build a single "Rails.app" that runs on all platforms, rather than just OS X?
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#135As it wasn't mentioned, anyone have any idea of the license he'll be releasing this under?
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
To figure out your list, I have to
No. You have to know none of that. You just have to copy/paste the steps from the rails-homepage (where they should be prominently listed, the lack thereof is the real bug).
"hey, download this all-inclusive, up-to-date, guaranteed to work disk image straight from us!"
Wait, how is that different from above?
Yes, you may be done 2 minutes faster. But you just deprived yourself of at least getting a glimpse on which parts are involved, even if you don't understand them yet. That means you're now even more hopeless when stuff breaks later (and stuff always breaks later).
And as a fun fact: Any sane bootstrapper would use the exact same script behind the scenes anyway. There simply is no other way unless you plan to re-invent homebrew and rbenv along the way.
I'm really troubled to understand who we're trying to care for here. It sounds like you want to make this Really Easy for absolute beginners who can barely setup a printer.
That is a noble goal (for a printer driver), but if you want to teach someone programming then there's a point where you have to stop dumbing it down artificially. And that point is as early as possible.
The worst you can do to a newbie is to put him into an opaque sandbox with different behaviors and errors from what the "big guys" are using.
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#137As Rails founding fathers complained of Java frameworks bloat, today's micro-framework fans complain of Rails bloat. Quite a cycle we've come through, isn't it ?
He's not complaining about bloat. Unlike many other high-level languages, Ruby has several viable execution environments (MRI 1.8, MRI 1.9, Rubinius, and JRuby) and Rails works on all of them. OS X ships with a system Ruby. The result seems to be that some people have trouble getting the right combination of runtime and libraries running.
And that's my point, Rails has a lot of functionality that it provides through a lot of dependencies.
Exactly the opposite of the self-contained mini-framework (if not micro-) it started as.
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But in practice it's almost never that simple. Install Xcode; 1) Install in App Store 2) Still not actually installed, start it, that finished the installation 3) You still don't have what you need, find where they've moved "install command line tools" to and install that 4)The compiler you have isn't the right one as Lion no longer has GCC as its default compiler and you want to use RVM 5) ...... Once you've done it…
but the first few times it can easily be half a day lost just trying to get the environment working.
The above steps are reasonably robust and implicitly teach you things about your programming environment that you must learn (or at least have seen) as early as possible.
We should decidedly not dumb that down. There must be one canonical installation procedure for everyone and it must be as easy as above. There must not be "an easy way" and "a hard way". The above is as easy as you can make it without hiding crucial information from the user.
Rails has plenty of harmful padding already, we need less of that, not more.
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
To figure out your list, I have to No. You have to know none of that. You just have to copy/paste the steps from the rails-homepage (where they should be prominently listed, the lack thereof is the real bug). "hey, download this all-inclusive, up-to-date, guaranteed to work disk image straight from us!" Wait, how is that different from above? Yes, you may be done 2 minutes faster. But you just deprived yourself of at…
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
-------------------
"hey, download this all-inclusive, up-to-date, guaranteed to work disk image straight from us!"
Wait, how is that different from above?
-------------------
Really? You really have to ask how those two processes are different?
"stop dumbing it down artificially"
If (sometimes competing) complexities weren't continually added, there wouldn't be a need to 'dumb it down'.
"(and stuff always breaks later)"
Wow. Most other web framework communities don't have that much problems with 'stuff always breaking later'. Maybe Rails has reached a tipping point?
"There simply is no other way unless you plan to re-invent homebrew and rbenv along the way."
Or until someone else does 'reinvent' one of those, and all the cool kids start using it, leaving everyone who learned the 'legacy' way out in the cold without an upgrade path beyond "start over".
with different behaviors and errors from what the "big guys" are using
I think part of the purpose of the kickstarter project is having one of the 'big guys' behind it. Supposedly that would mean at least one (or more) of the 'big guys' would indeed be using the same process as the 'newbs', reducing this chasm.
Sounds like you're threatened some by this - it was hard for you, therefore it should always be hard for everyone for now and forever.
Re: Kickstarter: rails.app
#140I can't help but wonder how these developers that are struggling to install rails on OSX will go when it comes to setting up rails in a production environment.
Seemingly everyone just does
git push to heroku
and that's been heralded as the best thing ever, so people don't have to futz with all the server setup/management.
But with regards to people looking for similar ease of use on the desktop for local development, they're all blithering idiots who shouldn't be allowed to touch a computer because they don't understand the intricacies of rvm vs rbenv.
There seems a bit of a disconnect here. Most people are proud of all the hard-won knowledge (sometimes through months or years of experience), and feel that everyone else should have to go through similar hell to attain some magic level of guru-ness. But... don't take away my heroku account!