Ruby on Rails
It is no secret that our UI is built using Ruby on Rails. I first heard using Ruby for UI development from Greg, that was years ago. He asked me:"Have you considered using Ruby for a project? ... is using it, and it is said pretty fast for development." I was like: are you kidding me?...Java or C# for UI were my choices. Then I heard ROR getting more attraction, then I went to JavaOne conference, ROR was everywhere, and then I found Jason (who I got to know and respect during my Chicago days) was a big fan of it too.
I was evaluating the UI technology for FreeWheel. PHP was not a good choice, experience taught me that PHP can quickly become difficult to maintain even it develops fast. C#/.NET was not good either, it is very much bound to MSFT, I didn't want that. It was not even clear that it would speed up the development. JAVA's multi-tier structure is slow for coding, and I was not going to have a large multi-tier UI system since day one. Then Bing came, she said: you should use Ruby on Rails, period. Bingo! That was the last nail in the coffin. ROR it is.
We started a journey of using ROR for large B2B platform development. It was a bold choice, we couldn't find ROR developers in China. The ROR community is small in US, it is even smaller in China. So I hired fresh graduates from top schools, betting that smart people will learn quickly, and it will just work...Until we broke into the ROR Beijing community...Then we hired top notch leaders from that community. Now everybody knows FreeWheel, and knows we are using ROR for large B2B UI development. We are getting candidates applying FreeWheel jobs directly from that community...My bet worked to my favor too, smart people indeed learn quickly, they are all ROR experts now, in just a few months.
China Machine Press recently invited Hideto to translate a ROR book published by O'Reilly. He wants to extend the invite to FreeWheel's UI team, the team is going to participate in the book translation, which is great... Now we are really getting somewhere with ROR! I am so proud!
I am no fool in thinking that our mission is accomplished, as a matter of fact, it just started. Starting from the day our product was launched. ROR is popular for small projects, however, it is still unproven for large scale B2B platform. I am sure we will run into challenges with ROR in production, I am also sure that we can overcome any challenges with this team!
We are committed to share those challenges along the way, with the community, with everybody, stay tuned!
I was evaluating the UI technology for FreeWheel. PHP was not a good choice, experience taught me that PHP can quickly become difficult to maintain even it develops fast. C#/.NET was not good either, it is very much bound to MSFT, I didn't want that. It was not even clear that it would speed up the development. JAVA's multi-tier structure is slow for coding, and I was not going to have a large multi-tier UI system since day one. Then Bing came, she said: you should use Ruby on Rails, period. Bingo! That was the last nail in the coffin. ROR it is.
We started a journey of using ROR for large B2B platform development. It was a bold choice, we couldn't find ROR developers in China. The ROR community is small in US, it is even smaller in China. So I hired fresh graduates from top schools, betting that smart people will learn quickly, and it will just work...Until we broke into the ROR Beijing community...Then we hired top notch leaders from that community. Now everybody knows FreeWheel, and knows we are using ROR for large B2B UI development. We are getting candidates applying FreeWheel jobs directly from that community...My bet worked to my favor too, smart people indeed learn quickly, they are all ROR experts now, in just a few months.
China Machine Press recently invited Hideto to translate a ROR book published by O'Reilly. He wants to extend the invite to FreeWheel's UI team, the team is going to participate in the book translation, which is great... Now we are really getting somewhere with ROR! I am so proud!
I am no fool in thinking that our mission is accomplished, as a matter of fact, it just started. Starting from the day our product was launched. ROR is popular for small projects, however, it is still unproven for large scale B2B platform. I am sure we will run into challenges with ROR in production, I am also sure that we can overcome any challenges with this team!
We are committed to share those challenges along the way, with the community, with everybody, stay tuned!
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5/10/2008 8:27 PM
Diane's Blog wrote:
Have been really busy recently, forgot to update my blog...I just realized
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