My Future with Merb, Rails 3, and Ruby

So after my initial negative reaction to the announcement of the merger, I’m slightly less worried about it, but still not at all happy about it. I have no doubt that this initial release of Rails 3 will be a big win for Rails programmers, but I’m very worried about Rails slipping back into the depths of bloatware. If that happens, all this merger will have accomplished is to get rid of or (best case scenario) demote the popularity of Merb or any subsequent forks.

It’s absolutely great that the Rails team had finally realized that opinionated software isn’t a win-win situation. But now there won’t be any major competitor for Rails. By that I mean, Rails will once again be the “best” option especially as there won’t be competing frameworks that are as flexible as Rails will be. I have a very bad feeling that lack of competition will lead to another stagnation of the framework. Just look at what Merb has done for Rails, made it look at itself and realized it needed to change.

At this point my options are few: get out of Ruby and find a web framework in another language, fork Merb, roll my own, or use Rails 3.

Option #1: Leave Ruby for a Framework in Another Language

I’m not at all favoring option 1 since I absolutely love Ruby and no matter how disappointed I am in these recent events, I won’t hold it against the language.

Option #2: Fork Merb

Definitely possible, although it’s not like I could maintain an entire framework like Merb as a lone wolf. Also a lack of community is a little disheartening.

Option #3: Roll My Own

Obviously this would be a tremendous effort of time and energy, although it could be a massive learning experience. Not necessarily the best option if I actually want to accomplish web projects in the next year.

Option #4: Rails 3

I would have to say that at the very least, in order for this to happen it would have to be proven to me that in at least 90% of cases that Rails 3 will at least as good as Merb 1.x was. That means performance, volume of code, quality of public APIs, lightweight, flexibility, etc. Suffice it to say, Rails 3 will have a lot to prove to me before I could condone using it.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that for now I’m going to focus on pure Ruby / Merb projects running with a forked version of the 1.x line. I probably won’t be altering any of the forked code for now, but using it as a stable copy. When Rails 3 comes out I’ll probably give it a try, but it’s going to go through quite the gauntlet for me to accept it as a viable production technology.