Part of my job at Apress is to commission books on open source web development. Without any doubt the hottest topic right now is Ruby on Rails. I’m working with a number of authors on book titles and they’re all remarkably similar in that they’re passionate and forthright individuals. In fact, my experience has shown that there’s definitely a “Rails mindset” that’s quite different from anything that’s gone before. Rails is about far more than making websites.

In his blog posting on notrocketsurgery.com, Ryan Norbauer critically responds to a speech by Dave Thomas at RailsConf, but in doing so neatly outlines the Rails philosophy. Quote:

What has been most surprising for me at RailsConf has been the extent to which so many people just don’t get what makes Rails Rails. The Rails framework is not just a new toy; it’s a radical new philosophy of web development—and of programming in general.

Read the blog posting here.