The document discusses the state of Ruby on Rails, including one developer's growing dislike of J2EE and dilemma of leaving a high paying J2EE job for Rails, another developer questioning how a Rails application could be written in 600 lines, and mentions 150,000 downloads and 400+ professionals from 55 countries using Rails. It also lists names of contributors to Rails and mentions creating an industry and getting organized.

1. The State of
Ruby on Rails
David Heinemeier Hansson

2. What an amazing year

3. My disenchantment with my job grows daily.
The more I use Rails, the more I dislike the
absolute mountain of crap that is J2EE.
Certainly I want to do the best I can for
Webify but there is no joy in working with
J2EE anymore.
So I face quite the quandary: J2EE pays very
well. I have been working with Java for 8
years now, have lots of experience and I am
essentially at the top of the pecking order
of engineers at my current job. To leave the
J2EE world would seem to be career suicide.
Mike Perham, Java Developer

4. It didn’t start out like that

5. First they ignore you,

6. then they laugh at you,

7. then they fight you,

8. About tadalist, that application is so stupid
that I'm wondering how the hell it could have
taken him 600 lines to write it. Also, the
hugely hyped 'killer application' of RoR,
Basecamp, is a total fraud imho.
The screenshots look nice, and are nicely
presented. So I did make an account and
started using it. And honestly, everything
they say is true, it sets itself apart in
simplicity. Not difficult to write that in a
few weeks.
Geert Bevin, Developer of .

11. then you win

12. 150,000 downloads

16. 400+ professionals
from 55 countries

26. Envy

28. But why?

29. Absolute competition
is not an absolute good

30. Just enough to make it
worth it, not enough
to discourage

31. Stories that people
were ready to hear

32. Now what?

33. 1.0

34. Tools in the chain

35. SwitchTower

36. Gauge

37. Conductor

38. Creating an industry

40. Getting organized

41. David Heinemeier Hansson (nextangle)
Florian Weber (csshsh)
Jamis Buck (minam)
Jeremy Kemper (bitsweat)
Leon Breedt (bitserf)
Marcel Molina Jr. (noradio)
Michael Koziarski (nzkoz)
Nicholas Seckar (ulysses)
Sam Stephenson (sam-)
Scott Barron (htonl)
Thomas Fuchs (madrobby)
Tobias Luetke (xal)

42. Web team, sysadmin

45. RailsConf?

46. Questions?