Need help writing about Rails in magazine article

[Tony Maserati]

Hi. I'm trying to write about Rails for this magazine article. How
does it look so far? I'm trying to explain it to the average man - NOT
the developer.

"Rails is a system which drastically simplifies web applications - by
letting one develop using Ruby [1], by having a more reasonable way of
organizing things [2], and by automating a lot more [3]. Rails also
opens the door for failsafe applications by writing tests and then
making sure the application passes these tests [4]"

[1] Perl, Lisp and Smalltalk. [2] In conjunction with semantic, W3-
verified HTML and CSS, and JavaScript via jQuery. [3] I.e. database
management. [5] Behavior Driven Development via Cucumber.

Anything I should add, rephrase or take away? Especially [3], is there
anything I could add there?

Thanks!

[Michael Kimsal]

"more reasonable" as compared to what? you would be fine with
"reasonable" without the "more".

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[Sarah Allen]

I usually say something like this:

Rails is a framework for developing web applications -- a set of software libraries that already implement 80% of what a typical web application needs to do. Rails came of age in early 2000s, after the industry had gone through an intense period of experimentation in the mid-to-late 90s in how to best develop applications for the web, leveraging relational databases and other internet services. Rails implemented best practices that were then established and continued to innovate on how to streamline the process of building a web app....

I also think it is important to say something about open source and the abundance of Ruby libraries which implement common tasks and integration with other systems.

Sarah

[Tony Maserati]

I was thinking compared to most PHP apps where everything is tossed into the same pile of shit :-)

[Michael Kimsal]

There's no need to go there. I've just had to deal with a POS rails
app -they really do exist. Resist the name calling urge.

[Tony Maserati]

Many thanks for that ma'am! That was very neatly put.

Tony

[Joe Fiorini]

A couple thoughts, take them for what they're worth :)

1) I agree with Michael; I have seen some PHP apps that were way more well written than some Rails apps I've worked on.
2) This may be nitpicking: I would avoid saying that Rails "simplifies web applications" but instead say it simplifies writing web applications. Some have mistook Rails as a framework for simple crud apps, but we know that isn't the case.
3) The organization in Rails is reasonable but more than that it's consistent, which makes for much faster development since I don't have to think about a directory structure up front. That is a killer feature.
4) Cucumber not only opens the door for writing tests, it enables testers to write and maintain automated test suites in a way they never have before. This is HUGE business value for most organizations that have dedicated QA.

Nice work. Can you post the finished product? I'd love to read what you end up with!