I’m in the middle of day 4 of RailsConf 2009. It’s been a great conference. I’ve learned a lot, and gotten to meet a large number of people whom I’ve known only through Twitter and IRC. I’ve also had the chance to meet a lot of new people. Some are well down the Rails path, and others are brand new to the community. All were greated warmly.
During the keynote of David Heinemeier Hansson, I realized how far Rails has come in the past few years, both as a web framework, and as a community. Rails has grown up.
Merb showed Rails a number of things, not the least of which is that people want choice, while being provided defaults. Rails listened, and now Merb and Rails are merging to become Rails 3. We will have greater choice and improved performance.
For close to 70% of attendees, this is their first RailConf. My A-Z Introduction to Ruby on Rails tutorial had close to 100 attendees, all new to Rails. Thanks to the efforts of all, the Rails community is growing, and new developers continuing to be brought into the fold.
The biggest indication for me is that the “enterprise” is no longer being ignored. The Rails core team is taking into account the environments in which developers are working, and adding features and enhancement accordingly.
The Rails community is now, more than ever, becoming much more inclusive. And that, is maturity.
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