Rails Podcast Brasil, QCon Special - Yehuda Katz

Update 11/19: Seems like the zip file was corrupted, I replaced it with the mp3 file itself. Please, try downloading again.

There’s been a lot of buzz around Rails lately. In particular, DHH published a series of Rails Myths articles. The #2 Mythbuster, for instance, brought Zed Shaw back for some more though it was rectified already. But Mythbuster #4 got some replies from Yehuda Katz, the current maintainer of Merb.

The main issue is around Modularity. DHH’s point of view is that Rails is modular enough and you can let some components loose. But Yehuda’s argument is that it requires you to patch Rails in order to release it from some of its components, whereas Merb was built around the concept of modularity from the beginning. Some people got worried that another Cold War was starting but Yehuda says that this is not the case and that open discussions like these are actually good, instead of having behind the scenes nitpicks.

While in San Francisco for QCon, I was able to interview Yehuda on these matters. By the way, thanks a lot for him and Leah for the nice dinner. I think this is a pretty comprehensive overview of Merb, DataMapper, the current issues around Rails modularity.

On the other hand we had some sad news yesterday as well: Engine Yard was forced to lay off lots of Rubinius developers. Evan explained the reasons in his blog, and Yehuda states again that Engine Yard is still committed to Rubinius. Besides that, they also announced yesterday that EY will have a new line of services around Amazon Web Services, providing tuned appliances for optimal Rails deployments in the cloud.

I have all the details in this special episode of the Ruby on Rails Podcast Brasil (in English). It is not in the official website yet, but expect it to show up in the feeds by tomorrow. Meanwhile you can download it directly from this link

I’ll have more insights from QCon later this week, stay tuned.