On my flight home Friday I read the latest issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal, courtesy of their booth at JavaOne in SF. With "Ruby on Rails - Java Successor?" on the cover and every third JavaOne session having "Ruby" in the title, how could I avoid it? The article discusses a bit of what is making Ruby and more importantly Ruby on Rails "more than just a flavor of the month". At the top of their list is productivity. Core to this is the principle of Convention over Configuration. The idea being that Rails just works the way you would expect it to. That really resonates with me. Now I know that companies don't set out to develop software that works in ways you don't expect, but clearly Ruby and Rails are getting it right. This same principle is being followed by Ubuntu and look at the success they are having.

Just check out some of these quotes and if you are even slightly technical you want to download it and play with it immediately. But what it really makes me want to do even more is copy it in the products I help design and build here at Sun.