I had a dream last night. It looked something like this:
The Rails Zero Web D. Environment
Why Rails Zero?
No installation
No configuration
No gem/dependency/firewall/proxy issues
No database install/configuration
Geographic and platform independent…just needs a browser and an
internet connection.
What Rails Zero provides?
.An always available, world accessible Rails development environment
for you and your development team.
.An ajax-enabled, web 2.0 Rails IDE (written in Ruby on Rails of
course!!)
.Code editor includes syntax highlighting, code completion,
refactoring, etc/
.Online source code revision control (a la subversion)
.full online hosted database schema control (mysql or postgresql)
.rails virtual consoles for interactive ruby/rails sessions including
debugging and migrations.
.Immediate gratification…log in, make a change, see the results in
real-time.
.full control of your ruby/rails versions, plugins and engines.
thoughts?
Interesting, except I think perhaps without really compelling reasons,
most developers won’t give up:
- Textmate, vi, emacs, etc. The power and flexibility of a
developer’s toolset would have to be surpassed in order to compel
people to switch.
- Performance. Even though it might perform well on the server-side,
transmission over an Internet connection will slow it down (especially
things like running tests, debugging etc.).
Other than that it sounds pretty cool. I don’t think it would be
something I would use (I prefer to automate more stuff using scripts
and the console like deployment, testing etc…unless you figured out
a way to do that), but cool concept nonetheless.
–Jeremy
I think this is a great idea. Done well might bring rails development
to a new level (imagine also this thing packaged as instant rails
is…)
Luca
2006/12/13, Jeff A. [email protected]:
My opinion is that in the beginning of learning Rails its got
to be as bare as possible.
If you develop in this environment you wanna know the nitty gritty
So textmate but no bundle editor.
In the beginning type everything by hand.
You want to feel the syntax.
That’s why I did the Hivelogic install.
By hand. Getting the feel of terminal.
And then slowly automate certain actions you know.
Like migrations.
Type it in manually first.
So imagine as a noob in my IDE and then totally alone in terminal.
I would be naked and have the feeling of not learning a thing.
But, these are just my 2 euro cents.
Peter
I think it would be great for new developers that want to ‘try’
ruby/rails without a lot of hassle or muss…
So if that was the target maybe some Rails advocacy people could work
on such a project…and host it for such a purpose.
Or if it was truly beleived that people could/would develop this way,
one of the rails hosting providers would be a good fit to build such a
beast.
Just thinking out loud…
Some people should stop dreaming and start working… 
I’m sure my dreams were influenced by some surfing I did last night…
I saw these for the first time and was inspired
dabbledb (http://dabbledb.com/)
Zoho Creator (http://creator.zoho.com)
Coghead (http://www.coghead.com/)