Comments on: Ruby on Rails: the Duplo generation

By: Giles Bowkett

Giles Bowkett — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Blaming the Rails guys isn’t fair. Blaming the complainers isn’t fair either. Just avoid them. Or blame yourself for listening to them.

By: Zach

Zach — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. In fact I was a Duplo generation Rails developer myself not too long ago. Then one day I just started picking apart my plugins, starting with file_column, and I got hooked. I’m by no means a stellar developer now, and I still have a lot to learn. But I’m creating a website with a friend for the guys that are like this. Tearing apart plugins, tutorials on simple stuff. I really want a place that developers can go to and find any answer they’re looking for. I can’t tell you how many times, I’d go through pages and pages of Google results trying different solutions. So it won’t be any complex code, but hopefully it’ll help guys avoid what I went through and help me gain an even deeper understanding of the language.

By: Bob Hoskins

Bob Hoskins — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Sell Duplo, get Duplo users.

Rails is attractive as Duplo. Less so if you take the Duplo out.

Why is this suprising?

By: Michael Schuerig

Michael Schuerig — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Don’t drop the Duplos. They boost productivity, they provide a common language that makes understanding other people’s projects much easier. Understand the large building blocks: Rails plugins are not atomic, so look inside, see how they work, learn from them and improve them.

By: Clinton

Clinton — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Abstractions are Duplo blocks? Just because you use a plug-in to save time doesn’t mean that you couldn’t build the same feature if necessary. There are a few hard-core assembly programmers who probably think C programmers are ‘pussies’ for letting a compiler help them get their job done.

The whole software world is built upon reusable libraries, Duplo blocks if you prefer, both open-source and closed-source. Ruby/Rails libraries/plug-ins are no different in concept to what has been happening for the past 50 years.

In short, your post is B.S.

By: Michael Bleigh

Michael Bleigh — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

I think you have a point: there are plenty of Rails developers who are writing bad Rails apps because they are just snapping together plugins they don’t understand rather than learning real best practices and doing things for themselves. But I would argue that these "Duplo" developers exist on all platforms to some extent and ultimately aren’t necessarily harmful to the larger platform ecosystem.

Duplo developers usually fall into the categories of a) people new to programming or at least programming in Ruby and Rails or b) people who aren’t really concerned about ever becoming developers and simply want to snap together an app with no real programming knowledge. The second group of people will never make up a substantial portion of the community, and though they may be "leeching" (to appropriate a file-sharing term), they aren’t really causing any harm, and will probably eventually migrate to something even less "developery" like a Drupal or KickApps or similar platform. And to the first group of developers, they will eventually kick the Duplo habit as they become more fluent in the language and patterns and feel more confident.

The real "action" that needs to be taken by the community is to make sure to be open and welcoming to those who are just getting started and want to move on past the Duplo stage. For those who are happy to create without any knowledge of the internal workings…well, I’m not losing any sleep worrying about their competition.

By: CRACKHEAD

CRACKHEAD — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Are you guys kidding? Do you know how many people blog about mundane rails topics every single day? I had to stop reading planetrubyonrails cause 60% of the posts were garbage. And you want these people to also release plugins? The secret to a successful platform is not more, but less. You know, signal vs noise. Looking through some of the RoR projects released on google code should make it clear that you do not want these people contributing. The best thing to do is just learn to ignore them.

By: Danno

Danno — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

I dunno, I like the duplos, particularly for some of the trickier things like authentication, precisely because I know I’m not smart enough to design it better. Oh, I’m sure I could program any given plugin if someone handed me the design, but that’s not why I want these plugins. They abstract away the *really* hard part: the code pattern. That they include the a code implementation is a nice time saving benefit (mainly in that I don’t have to figure out what they’re trying to say, I can either use it or see how it actually works).

If you’re arguing that everyone should have the design chops to build an authentication system, or attachment capacity, or a forum, I don’t necessarily agree. These are things that are nice/necessary to have in an application, but are easily outside of a given developer’s concern for an application. If you’re saying they should be able to go under the covers and tweak it and add features without getting hamstrung, then I concur.

By: Reg Braithwaite

Reg Braithwaite — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Love the metaphor, agree that many elements of Rails caters to this type of developer (MSFT calls them "Morts"), but disagree that Rails is _creating_ them. Am I suppose to believe that there is this smart person who is ready to roll their own, but after building a Rails app or two they lose the initiative?

I’m sure there are a few people like that, but my guess is that most of the Duplo developers out there would be using Duplo somewhere, Rails just offers them the opportunity to use Ruby Duplo instead of PHP Duplo or VB.NET Duplo.

_The real "action" that needs to be taken by the community is to make sure to be open and welcoming to those who are just getting started and want to move on past the Duplo stage_

This is where the action is, bravo.

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Part of the problem is that Rails was "marketed" as a Duplo type solution. We all saw the DHH create-a-blog-engine-in-15-minutes demo. We all thought it was awesome. We all jumped. Then, we all very quickly realized the awesomeness of Ruby (not Rails although Rails is awesome too). Then, we all became Ruby developers, not Rails developers. So, until we get over that hump, I am afraid that scaffolding, plugins, and Duplo will be part of the Rails community. We should NOT discourage this. We should continue to welcome more people into the community. As Rails matures, and Ruby becomes more accepted, the Duplo generation will also mature.