Bobby Wilson

Introduction

Historically when a piece of open source software, a framework in the case of Rails is released people get fired up about using more open source software in their everyday workflow. Some may switch to Vim or Emacs, others install Linux. This hasn’t been the same for Rails, Rails developers bought expensive Apple hardware, and picked up a commercial text editor. What gives?

Apple Hardware

Most people I know that are Rails developers work on a MacBook Pro. All of the user groups, training classes, and meet-ups I have been to people sport Apple hardware. Most also carry an iPhone (myself included, it has been totally crappy lately). I know that Apple hardware just recently started to get popular since OS X came out, but this isn’t just the normal popularizing of a new technology this is something deeper. Go to a PHP, Perl, web design, or internet users groups, and you won’t see near the saturation of Macs. There is something about the Rails way and the Apple way that goes together. I think that Rails people find Rails because they want something that is elegant, powerful, and doesn’t make you mess with the low level things you don’t want to mess with. I think people like Apple for the same reasons.

My Apple Experience

I jumped on the Apple bandwagon back in 2004 when I was going to school for photography and web design. I was using Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Flash, and they all seem to run much more stable on the schools high powered Macs. So I bought a 17″ Powerbook, and I loved it, it was solid and I didn’t have to restart it all the time. The OS X interface was leaps and bounds better than Windows XP. Apple does something with their human interfaces that is second to none in my opinion. I now have a little MacBook that I bought in 2006, and it has been really great for the most part. The only thing that sucks about it is the discoloring of the plastic below the keyboard on either side of the touch pad, some plastic also cracked but I am hard on stuff and don’t blame Apple for that. Apple usually makes a good product and I can’t deny that.

TextMate

In the first Rails screen casts that were produced, there was a text editor that was being used that seemed amazing. Code just seemed to stream onto the screen. Snippets here, and code completion, a basic blog was finished in 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it, I needed TextMate, I don’t know how I did anything without it. TextMate is many developer’s dream editor, there is a bundle for just about every programming language, and markup out there. A bundle has code completion, and snippets for whatever sort of developing you may be doing. The Rails bundle is very robust, and a lot of very savvy Rails developers use it. It definitely embraces the Apple/Rails style of simple yet powerful. If you think Rails and Apple go together, well consider Rails/Apple/TextMate the holy grail. The only catch is that TextMate isn’t open-source, and it isn’t free either. If you don’t have a Mac forget about it. To many that doesn’t matter, it has been starting to wear on me.

My TextMate Experience

I come from a design background, and I was very used to the IDE packages that Adobe formerly Macromedia put out, namely Dreamweaver and the Flash IDE. If you read my last post, I’ve since changed my mind about that. I started using TextMate and thought it was the be all, end all of editors. I was using the code completion, and getting a handle on snippets. It was great, until I got hired at a company that uses all PCs (except for Chris). I did manage to get Linux on my box, but TextMate was not happening. No Mac no TextMate. I am web developer, I need a text editor, and I am not going to use a different editor at work and at home. Exit TextMate.

My Open Source Experience

I have always been a fan of open-source software because it didn’t cost anything, and there was always a community that would give you a hand in getting going. I would take an open-source community over commercial customer support any day. Just today I was working on something that didn’t seem to work quite right, and I was able to hop into the IRC channel for the software I was using and work through the bug with the lead developer who maintains the software. It is hard to say the same for commercial products. With open-source software you become apart of something. You may start as a user, and then look for some help on a feature, the next thing you know you are the veteran helping out all of the new people using the software. You may even contribute to the source of the software eventually. This is the sort of thing you can never dream of doing with a commercial product unless you become an employee. Open-source developers are awesome because most of them work on a project because they love it and they believe in it, not because they are lining their pockets.

Conclusion

I think that most Rails folks choose what works for them and leave it at that. It doesn’t bother them that while Ruby is open-source and Rails is open-source, and their development platform isn’t. It didn’t bother me at first, but now it has started to bother me. The biggest issue is not being in control of how things are set up, and not knowing the system from ground up. This is my new goal, completely know my system from hardware details, to operating system, to software details. I am going to start looking for a good (non-Apple) hardware vendor. Any recommendations?