David Heinemeier Hansson created the Ruby on Rails program frame and is a partner in 37signals, manufacturers of the popular Basecamp package of online collaboration tools. He's been profiled in major publications like Wired and Business 2.0. He is the recipient of the"hacker of the year" award by both Google and O'Reilly Media.
I recently spoke with Heinemeier Hansson. We discussed Ruby on Rails, web development, and the state of ecommerce.
Kerry Murdock: Our listeners are ecommerce owners and managers; many are not programmers. Could you explain Ruby on Rails?
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David Heinemeier Hansson: Ruby on Rails is actually two components. The first part is Ruby, which is a programming language in precisely the identical sense of Java or what have you. The Rails part, which I am involved in, is the stuff that sits on top of it. It makes Ruby suitable for web application development. It's comparable to other frameworks, such as .net, that sit on top of languages and make them easier for us.
For Ruby and Rails, the goal is pretty much any web application. We have a lot of people using Ruby on Rails to construct their own ecommerce stores or add ecommerce components to their helping applications.
Ruby on Rails makes it a good deal easier and quicker for anybody who would like to make a web application.
Murdock: Our Website, Practicalecommerce.com, is a Rails application. Our chief architect, Brian Obtaining, is a passionate proponent of your frame. Can you tell us some significant sites that use Rails?
Heinemeier Hansson: Two of the large ones are Yellowpages.com and Twitter, which can be a blessing and a curse to bring up because they have [Twitter] had a reasonable quantity of problems unrelated to Rails. In the ecommerce area, there is a cool website called Shopify, which is essentially an ecommerce engine built on top of Ruby on Rails, where someone, without understanding programming, can construct their own ecommerce store.
Murdock: Software frameworks, as I understand it, decrease the development time of rolling out applications. Is that true?
Heinemeier Hansson: Yes, I certainly think so. I generated Ruby on Rails, in part, because I was not getting stuff done quickly enough. Ruby on Rails was created for its first product we created at 37signals, called Basecamp. I was the sole programmer. I had 10 hours a week to work on the application, and that I had been going to college on the side. I had something that was just profoundly productive. I was not finding that in the conventional surroundings of C#, Java, PHP, etc.
Why is Rails and other similar frameworks so powerful is that they round up a good deal of the commonalities that everyone goes through when they create a new application. By way of instance, all of the drudgery of connecting to the database, mapping it to items, etc. All these are common elements that all applications require.
With Ruby on Rails in particular, we've popularized the notion of convention over configuration. Before Rails, many frameworks and environments supposed that everyone was starting from scratch, from a blank slate, and they needed to configure every area of the frame from scratch to match their applications.
I noticed that everybody appeared to be doing the exact same thing over and over again. All of them seemed to be placing roughly the very same parts of configuration inline, or they were tweaking bits of configurations that didn't matter. A good example is what we call the primary key in a database. That's only a choice that has no bearing on the end application. So, why bother wasting and spending time on figuring out exactly what that should be? Instead, in Rails we have chosen to go with what we call conventions.
So, there is a good deal of decisions which were made upfront about how a web application needs to work. It eliminates having to repeat the very same choices repeatedly. That massively speeds up development time.
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Murdock: How long does it save? You mentioned Basecamp, the application you developed.
Heinemeier Hansson: It Tough to generalize. People have promised anything from 50 percent quicker to 10-times faster. It depends upon the environment. If you're working in Java, what framework are you currently using? Are you currently working at PHP? What are your resources and techniques? It is pretty much impossible to generalize.
For me, if it had not been for Ruby on Rails, I likely would not have done Basecamp. It would not have been possible to construct an application with only 10 hours weekly, by myself. I spent about four or five weeks at approximately 10 hours a week to perform it. We started Basecamp in February of 2004.
Murdock: I have known lots of programmers. Your frame, Ruby on Rails, affects net developers in virtually an emotional way. A developer recently said that your frame changed his life. How do you react to this?
Heinemeier Hansson: Why are developers more enthusiastic about Ruby on Rails compared to other surroundings? I believe it's because Ruby and Rails are passionate about developers. Ruby is a language which was created with a single core mission: to make developers happy. That is the mission of Mats [Yukihiro Matsumoto], the Japanese fellow who made Ruby. That is such a strong mission statement for a language.
I tried to do something similar with Rails -- bring the idea of earning a developer happy from Ruby and to Rails. And, it really resonates with developers.
We care a good deal about the aesthetics of this frame. That's something which programmers appreciate. Once they have worked in Ruby on Rails, it is usually very tough for them to return to environments and languages that aren't optimized for this. They aren't optimized for beautiful code, and all these other things that they have attempted in the Rails world. Developers respond with plenty of affection for the language and for the frame.
Murdock: Our audience is ecommerce merchants, by and large. What do you think about this state of ecommerce?
Heinemeier Hansson: it is a lot better than it was. I buy pretty much everything I can online. I see the trend from web sites including Shopify that makes it easy for people to put up a very persuasive shop. It is helping matters even further.
We see a change from when we started Basecamp four decades back. It was not that long ago when clients would ask if it is safe to go into a credit card. Today that is a non-issue. We don't receive any support requests stating,"Oh, I do not trust your website for placing my credit card" So, it certainly seems like things have moved forward in a positive manner.
Murdock: Do you have a favourite ecommerce website?
Heinemeier Hansson: I enjoy Zappos a lot. And, it is not so much due to the site, but as a result of the organization, along with the emphasis on customer service. One of the terrific ecommerce experiences I've had over the last year was ordering my first pair of sneakers through Zappos, picking normal delivery, and then getting an email two hours after stating,"We have updated your delivery to next moment. You are going to have it in the morning." I almost did not believe it.
I also have found that there is a slew of shops which are selling through Amazon but are not Amazon themselves. Like clothing stores, etc. I am also finding them on Google.
Murdock: You are from Denmark. You now reside in Chicago. Tell us about your interest in web development.
Heinemeier Hansson: It began back in the late'90s when I was employed as a gaming journalist. I had been reviewing computer games, console games, etc. I needed a site for that. So, I started studying a little HTML and coding on my own.
As time went on, I was not happy with only a static website. I wanted a website with community characteristics, and auto-updating -- all these things. To get that, I pretty much had to learn programming. It was not something I was seeking to do.
That is how I got interested in web development. I started learning PHP and so forth. I built my website for myself. As time went on, I started appreciating the process of making a web application over writing a game review website. So, I switched dreams and picked up programming.
Murdock: Anything else on your mind, David?
Heinemeier Hansson: If there is someone out there who's considering using Ruby on Rails but is unsure of it, I say,"Try it for a single day." The excellent thing about Ruby on Rails is that each and every part is free. And you can actually make something useful in one moment. On the Ruby on Rails work website, we've got a movie showing how you can create a very simple blogging system in 15 minutes.
So I strongly encourage those that are either are developers or operate with a programing staff to use it. Give it a go. See if you like it.
It is at 37signals. com. We post to our website a good deal about small businesses. It is all very much applicable to ecommerce websites. In addition, we address how we conduct our staff, how we do four-day workweeks, and things like that.
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