Two Thumbs on Rails
May 20, 2007 | By Raymond T. Hightower
The professional person has no choice but to be a continuous student. This author has spent the last four days at Rails Conf 2007 in continuing technical studies. Yet some of the most profound lessons learned were non-technical.
First, the Technical. What is Rails?
Ruby on Rails (“Rails” for short) is the latest in a long line of tools designed to help web developers create better software for their clients. Rails is all about high productivity and reduced development time. It’s a great tool, and Wisdom is currently developing three Rails applications for clients.
Interested parties can learn more about the Rails technology by Googling Ruby on Rails. End of technical discussion.
Now, the Profound
The closing keynote ended about thirty minutes ago. The presenter, Dave Thomas, challenged the audience of 1,600 developers to think very hard about questions that go far beyond technology. Specifically:
- What are we assuming?
- What do we do because it seems to have worked for other people?
- Why are we falling under the spell of [insert technology here]?
- Why do we use relational databases?
- What are we being fooled by?
An Oddball Example
One example of Thomas’ outside-the-box thinking: future user interfaces. Thomas envisions a user interface operated by two thumbs. His reasoning: Kids today play videogames with two thumbs. A kid skilled in video games can grab any game and be immediately competent. The game itself may be entirely different, but the interface is consistent. And a consistent interface draws the user in.Thinking
After four days (8am – 10:30pm) of intense technical discussions, it was good for us to stop and engage in metacognition: Thinking about what we’re thinking about. Very powerful.