Ionrock Dot Org

It is funny to see how problems change as issues get handled. I remember when I first started working with Rails and how impressed I was with ActiveRecord. Looking back, the issue was not nearly as difficult as I thought, and once I became used to having an ORM system, it was easy to find similar tools in other languages (PHP and Python).

Again, looking back at Rails, I found that the ORM is just half the battle. The efficiency of Rails is in its ability to link the ORM with the forms and the validation of the forms. Furthermore, it all revolved around the declaration of the objects. I remember being frustrated when I changed my object because often times I had to zero out my work, but in reality, the gains I got regarding form creation and validation were huge.

Now, I am sure if I had continued to use Rails for projects, I would have ran into problems. Even in my limited experience with it, I ran into some issues that were a pain to fix. But, I also noticed that problems I run into now with things like TurboGears were non-issues in Rails. This is frustrating but also edifying in that I have the opportunity to see the trade offs directly.

With that said, my issue now is forms. Simple text forms are a breeze and things like dates are even getting manageable. The problems start up when you try to validate while adding complex forms. Actually, I suppose my issues are not really problems. My frustration is that I have to write code for something silly like a form. I should be able to declare a data store and a template like filter and be done with it. The data store should be authenticating the data and the filter should be handling the formatting and style. The problem with too much automation is when you need to customize in which case a filter/template tool could handle making changes (similar to layering in XSLT).

These are not simple problems and I think in the end my resolve will be to make a go at solving them myself for my own purposes.

In other news, Patrick the wise has completely revamped the WebWorks site!!! This is great news because we have made so many changes at the company and this new site reflects not only a new vision, but new productivity. The whole site was updated and revamped in only a few weeks time! Congrats to Patrick and the Marketing team for making the magic happen.