I really like that the Rails team is pretty good at doing regular releases. One noticeable thing though is that ActiveRecord, almost, always has more fixes than the other Action* gems combined, understandable since its the most complicated piece, but I can't help to think of Ernie Millers ActiveRecord talk a few years back. <a href="https://youtu.be/yuh9COzp5voA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/yuh9COzp5voA</a>
(A few of the things that he talks about are since then fixed..)
It's fascinating to watch the changing reception of a given framework. I think this says a lot about how software projects grow old. Since my career is only slightly older than Rails, it's been the framework that I've got to watch the most completely. I recall in 2005 and 2006 there was an intense joy in the tech industry, relating to Rails, and it seemed like Rails was going to sweep the industry. In retrospect, that joy was mostly because Rails offered something simpler than the heavyweight Java frameworks that had dominated the era before. In 2006 there was the big question, "Is it Rails we love, or the ideas in Rails?" That is, did we all need to start using Ruby, or could we copy these ideas in whatever language we preferred? And nowadays we know the answer to that question. In 2005 and 2006 Rails had a huge impact on the industry, but by now its good ideas have been fully absorbed by other tech communities.<p>For those who want to remember the mood of the times, circa 2005, Bruce Eckel did a great job of capturing it in his December 2005 essay "The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts":<p><a href="http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=141312" rel="nofollow">http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=141312</a><p>He was lamenting/celebrating the sudden end of the hype around Java.
Is Rails relevant today in the world of rich front end frameworks other than for legacy applications? I used to be a big fan of Rails but there is a steep learning curve and looks like there are better alternatives now.