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Ready for takeoff.
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All right, hello everybody. Thank you so much for coming to RubyConf. Thank you for being here to listen to Ruby Archaeology: Forgotten Web Frameworks.
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I'm your host today, Nick Schwaderer. I just thought I would warm you up a bit because you might be jet-lagged like me.
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I traveled six time zones away, and everything's a bit messed up.
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Sometimes, people stretch or do exercises to keep awake through the morning before lunch. So, I have a little activity for you.
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I've noticed that sounds leak from room to room, so if something loud happens in the other rooms, they can hear it.
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I thought it might be fun to make all the other speakers feel a little intimidated because of how much fun we're having.
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So, I'm going to ask you to laugh as loudly as you can. I know you have your masks on, but we'll be safe about it.
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On the count of three, I want you to laugh all together, okay? One, two, three!
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So, what I want to talk about today is Ruby Archaeology, with a specific focus on web frameworks.
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These are web frameworks written in Ruby that have been genuinely forgotten.
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I work as a production engineer at Shopify on the Ruby and Rails infrastructure team, and I'm really grateful to be able to do this.
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This isn't part of my Shopify work; it’s more about our productive chaos time, or our passion projects.
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I have been interested in Ruby history for about four or five years, and I've been running the Past Rubies newsletter at PastRubies.live.
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It's not a weekly thing; rather, I recommend doing seasons like a TV show.
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If you want to produce content, maybe do six weeks a year, and then you can live your life.
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I became obsessed with what happened in Ruby 15 years ago and worked on that for a period of time.
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I encourage all of you to create great content, as it helps keep the community fresh.
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I'm also interested in reviving old Ruby gems and patterns that should still be in use today.
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If you've started Ruby in recent years, we have excellent tools for linting and established conventions.
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Ruby is a sharp knife, and there's a lot we can do with it.
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Thank you to Shopify for sponsoring my attendance here and allowing me to dive into the Ruby archives.
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Thank you to the community for being amazing.
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What Matt said this morning about Ruby's greatest wealth being its community resonates with me completely.
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The only other corporate thing I will mention is that at the Shopify booth, there will be a Ruby coding challenge every day.
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I may have had a hand in it and there may be a leaderboard involved.
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So, if you want to stop by, you can use the QR code and check it out.
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If you hate the challenge, just know that I had nothing to do with it.
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But if you like the challenge and think it's fun, then it absolutely was me.
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What am I actually here to talk about, though? None of this!
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In the 2000s, everyone was creating Ruby web frameworks.
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I have given a few talks on specific gems from the past, and I've written newsletters about them.
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I've watched many RubyConf talks from 2006, 2007, and 2008, observing the community.
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The inspiration for this talk comes from the fact that there are many Ruby web frameworks that I believe are forgotten.
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I ran this list by Aaron Patterson, who remembered some of them.
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This is quite interesting because back then, you couldn't easily get paid jobs writing Ruby.
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However, people were really excited about it, especially shortly after the Pickaxe book was published.
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People debated design patterns and configurations, modularization conventions, and what the Ruby way of building the web was.
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Today, I aim to have a higher-level discussion about these frameworks.
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I want to remind you that there was a time everyone experimented seriously with these frameworks.
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We should carry that spirit of experimentation into the future.
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I'll discuss three frameworks and one standard library gem that I think have been forgotten.
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The first one is CGI. You might be familiar with CGI, or if you're not, this is an all-access talk.
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The Common Gateway Interface is a set of standards that define how information is exchanged between a web server and a custom script.
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If you're unfamiliar with it, a simple way to think about it is in relation to Rack.
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CGI is a lower-level alternative that people were using before Rails became ubiquitous.
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It was a standard you could install on your Unix system that defined how your scripts could talk to HTTP requests.
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In the Ruby standard library, you have the CGI gem that you can use even today.
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The TL;DR is that a lot of Ruby idioms we know come from Perl magic.
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Let’s have a raw look at this from the documentation.
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As simple as it gets, a couple of puts commands can create a Ruby-based website.
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Of course, like with anything, there's extra syntactic sugar you can add.
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For example, you can use cgi.header to start writing more interesting HTML.
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People may remember Markaby, which is similar to today's Flex, where you write Ruby-style methods with blocks passed to them.
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This method looks quite neat, and it's interesting to know that CGI was widely referenced.
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This is an excerpt from Kirk Haynes, an Iowa maintainer.
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When he mentioned CGI.rb, it highlighted that it was considered a common way to use Ruby on the web.
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You could legitimately implement this today, just need to configure it along with a server like Apache.
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Your only limits are the raw Ruby you write because this approach is quite bare-bones.
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It would be fun for a sandbox project but likely not a viable solution unless for quick lightweight requests.
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Let’s move on to our first full-fledged framework: Nitro. Raise your hand if you've heard of Nitro.
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Great! Let me tell you what Nitro is not—it's not rocket science.
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Here's an image from the Nitro days, showcasing its marketing. It aimed to provide everything you need to create Web 2.0 applications easily and joyfully.
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Nitro was first released in October 2004 by George Moscovitis and Trans.
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It was a time when you could attend conferences using your moniker, which I think is a cool artifact from this period of history.
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The documentation boasted that it was a top-tier framework for rapid application development and offered an efficient API.
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It touted DSLs implemented in Ruby, presenting the most powerful object-relational mapping solution in the world.
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Nitro was web 2.0 ready, supporting Ajax and XML standards.
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One unique aspect for researchers is looking at the discussions on Ruby Talk discourse, particularly from 2006.
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James Britt noted that Nitro was on par with Rails, indicating its significance in Ruby web development.
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While I won't be discussing We, unfortunately, Nitro was mentioned alongside it.
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Its formal documentation outlines four libraries and one dependency.
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For example, Raw was a minimal version of a full web application.
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Then there was OG, the object-relational mapping and lifecycle manager.
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Interestingly, one notable aspect of Nitro is that it predated Rack and referenced CGI throughout its code.
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This framework also supports fragmented and action-based templates for componentization.
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I want to focus on OG for a minute, as it’s the most intriguing part of Nitro.
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OG aimed to allow you to write Ruby code while managing SQL and migrations.
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It attempted to provide a seamless experience in Ruby while managing database interactions.
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It would infer connections based on your Ruby classes, making development quick and efficient.
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OG reduced the overhead usually faced when working with object-relational mapping in Ruby.
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Despite its interesting features, it remained tied to older Ruby versions.
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While I haven't been able to get it to persist a whole database yet, I still see OG as worth a second look in 2022.
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I think if I were to pursue anything after this talk, it would be OG.
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The promises it offered were not entirely easy to uncover, which is a shame.
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The mailing list was active for a time, indicating interest in the framework.
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Let's now look at Ruby Waves, another framework for discussion.
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This was unveiled at a RubyConf in February 2008 by Dan Yoder from T Interactive.
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Ruby Waves aimed to be a cutting-edge framework amidst the excitement surrounding Ruby at the time.
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Dan's talk on it inspired many due to its ambitious plans.
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By 2009, however, it was mostly forgotten, even though it was discussed at various conferences.
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The excitement waned, especially as Rails began merging with Merb.
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The merger likely contributed to Ruby Waves losing momentum.
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Lastly, let's touch on Remains, which was unveiled in November 2006.
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This framework aimed to bridge the gap between Merb and Rails, marketed as modular and MVC-inspired.
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Despite some continued use, it too fell into relative obscurity.
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I haven’t heard much about Remains in recent years, yet it has some interesting features.
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One notable aspect was the use of a 'map' method in the controller for routing.
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In conclusion, many Ruby web frameworks have gone by the wayside.
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Still, I encourage you all to explore the rich history of Ruby and consider what innovative frameworks could emerge today.
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Let's reconnect the creative spirit that once fueled experimentation in the Ruby community.
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I invite you to reach out and collaborate on any projects you find interesting.
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Thank you so much for listening to my talk today. Enjoy RubyConf!
