Ruby on Rails 2.0

The release of Rails 2.0 made me realize once more what a great project Rails is.

We’ve seen a lot of changes since 1.0; the community working with and on Rails has grown enormously and Rails is now running some really big sites. Even though this has undoubtedly put pressure on the core team, the feel of the project hasn’t changed much.

In this release most new features were driven by people outside of the core team. This is mostly due to the willingness of the core team to accept patches and interact with the community. That takes dedication.

Most developers on the core team run their applications directly on trunk which means that gem releases are no longer a personal need. This, combined with the fact that people are always looking to get their patch in at the last minute, makes it very hard to get a new major release out the door. I therefore applaud David Heinemeier Hansson for putting his foot down and tagging 2.0 (only to find a small bug and having to tag 2.0.1 a day later). That takes courage.

I’m really happy that the core team has been able to keep Rails fun, because in the end, that’s what drives my productivity as a developer.