[OT] Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday

[Dan Shafer]

Hey, Alan. Long time no hear! I feared you had gone over to the Dark  
Coffee Side. Seems I was at least partly right!

I agree with you about Ruby on Rails. Fascinating framework. I  
watched the famous 15-minute video demo from a trade show and was  
quite blown away by the speed and ease with which the demonstrator  
created a blog tool in Ruby. (OTOH, the video for some reason didn't  
show the top few lines so I actually didn't get to see much code as  
it was being written.)

My hosting service provides Ruby on Rails for free so I tried to set  
up an instance. What a mess. I suspect the problem is with their  
instructions, which are either garbled or aimed at someone more savvy  
than I. Anyway, I decided based on your comment that "it's worth  
exploring a bit more," to download and install the OS X version and  
have another look. Ajax is enticing. There appears to be a Python  
implementation for Ajax as well, but the idea of creating Web sites  
that behave and look more like desktop apps -- which is what I gather  
so far is Ajax's raison d'etre -- has a certain allure.

Dan