10+ Years of Rails (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH joined the show to talk through the past, present, and future of Ruby on Rails — the most beloved web application framework in the Ruby community.

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Featuring:

• David Heinemeier Hansson – GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Ruby on Rails has influenced many frameworks over the years, and David shares with us a candid look at 10+ Years of Ruby on Rails.

David shares stories about why he started Ruby on Rails, and explains why programmers should market their projects. He discussed his early work on Rails, some of the early early contributors to Rails, how the success of Basecamp helped Rails succeed (and vice versa), the io.js & Node.js complications, his thoughts on getting paid for working on open source, and so much more.

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“If programming is going to be the thing I spend my time on, it damn well better be awesome. I need to have a good time.” - DHH @ 9:42

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• Ruby on Rails
• The ORIGINAL Ruby on Rails demo – Building a blog in 15 minutes with DHH
• REMOTE: The new book from 37signals
• REWORK: The new business book from 37signals.
• The Hottest Hacker on Earth | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
• RailsConf
• RubyConf
• Riding Rails: Rails 1.0: Party like it’s one oh oh!
• Riding Rails: Rails 2.0: It’s done!
• Riding Rails: Rails 3.0: It’s ready!
• Riding Rails: Rails 4.0: Final version released!
• The Road to Merb 1.0 with Ezra Zygmuntowicz
• DHH on Twitter: “More than 3800 people have contributed code to the core Rails framework”
• DHH on Twitter: “@codesoda @steveklabnik I’d rather you spend the $$ on having your people contribute to Rails on company time, if you want.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Rails is obligation-free software. See the MIT license. You can use it to make a trillion billion and not owe anyone royalties.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Flip side: Do not contribute patches to Rails under the false notion that users of the framework will then be indebted to reward you.”
• DHH on Twitter: “You don’t owe me anything to use Rails, and I don’t owe you anything for you using it.”
• DHH on Twitter: “@steveklabnik What’s your time horizon of sustainability? Rails has been rocking that model for 10+ years.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Congratulations to @shopify for deploying on Rails 4.1. Same app has been on Rails since 2005. 10 yrs later they’re an Ecommerce powerhouse.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Rails 5 will target Ruby 2.2+ exclusively, so we can rely on symbol GC and kwargs to cleanup a bunch of cruft. Ruby on Rails keeps moving!”
• DHH on Twitter: “After all these years, programming Ruby through TextMate to make Rails dance for the web remains one of my favorite activities in the world.”
• Ruby on Rails on Twitter: “2014 has seen 708 contributors get their patches accepted into Rails: http://t.co/18k1hh0vd7 — what a spectacular community effort!”
• DHH on Twitter: “@thomasfuchs @thijs Github is on 3.0 now. On the way to 4.x. 2.3 is five years old! Rails has lived as long again as it had at the time.”
• DHH on Twitter: “The original reality-compressed 15 minute Rails demo — including WUPS!”
• DHH on Twitter: “@gordo24 I think Rails has never been in a better position regarding code, community, and leadership. Broader and more engaged than ever.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Staggering collaborative effort on Rails. Almost 12,000 pull requests processed. Just 419 still open. Incredible.”
• DHH on Twitter: “Hard to comprehend how far Ruby and Rails have come since 2004 where I attended a 40-person RubyConf with just a few doing paid Ruby.”
• [Book] Punished by Rewards - by Alfie Kohn
• [Hero] Ward Cunningham
• [Hero] Dave Thomas
• [Hero] Martin Fowler
• Ruby Mailing Lists
• Kombucha

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!