Robby on Rails: It's all about context

It's all about context

Robby Russell — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 04:43:00 -0500

Well… Canada on Rails is over. There was an afterparty… and pictures will be uploaded in the next day. I had the priviledge of meeting many….many… many… talented… bright… and high maintenance people over the past few days. I went out of my way to go and introduce myself to several people and when you’re a speaker it seems to make that process even easier for others to ask you how you use Rails to solve certain types of problems. As Legacy systems, databases are problems that many people are encountering… it was comforting that people at the conference were highly interested in learning more.

The afterparty was alright… it got really exciting when a few of us decided to venture to a pub away from the club where the party was. Within 30 minutes… everybody followed. I got stuck sitting next to DHH and we got to discuss many topics with each other… such as legacy systems and how AR can be bent a little in one direction… but it’s not going to be the perfect solution for older problems. I have some work cut out for me. :-)

While I had him there… I was able to discuss prototyping with him. For example, does 37signals use prototypes that get thrown away? I’m not convinced that he’d agree with me... :but from how he described their process, which I can only assume is far from perfect and is evolving just as much as any of our processes… that they are onto something. It was entertaining and highly educational.

I have much more blogging to do…. and it’s true… Thomas Fuchs is really a direct descendent of Bon Jovi… and David Goodlad is really a Good Lad from Canada.

"It's all about context" by Robby Russell

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:53:06 -0500

Sunder,

it was great meeting you too! :-)

"It's all about context" by Sunder

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:43:59 -0500

It was great meeting you and Jeremy. Thanks for all the pictures. You should try and make it to MindCamp2.0 in Seattle.

"It's all about context" by brasten

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 11:31:46 -0500

I’ve been trying for awhile to convince people that AR works fine for existing - or legacy - databases. My favorite experience with that was mapping to a 100+ table database in ActiveRecord in a couple days. They had estimated 2-3 weeks just to upgrade their Java-based ORM to a new version.

It wasn’t pretty, a lot of set_table_names and overridden column names, but the result blew everyone away.

I was glad see that legacy/AR interaction is something you guys are promoting!