1) I highly recommend Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails. I also recommend the Pick Axe (Pragmatic Programmers Ruby book). I do not recommend Ruby for Rails. I bought it and skimmed it to realize I already knew everything in it after reading the other two.
2) B/c it has a great ORM layer (ActiveRecord) and strong ajax libraries (integration with prototype/script.aculo.us) which make it easy to quickly put together a very well organized app that has a lot of UI sizzle.
I also expect Merb to continue to gather steam, especially for people who "get" rails and who want to take it in specialized directions.
the parent post is dead on. the guy who wrote the article does not know rails well enough to find accurate criticisms.
the complaint he makes about the options hashes would be solved if someone took the time to document all of the private methods, etc. I like a mix of code + documentations to figure out how something works. Most of the rails contributers prefer to just read the code, which is why no docs exist.
I have thought about this for a few days and have concluded that it's a massive publicity stunt on Zed's part.
Think about how so many people get famous -- by creating controversy. Zed has done a great job (in terms of entertaining us)... now we just need to wait for the big announcement.
Zed is a talented developer and a committed open source contributor. It seems that some of the negative aspects of the community got to him and he sort of snapped...
But I suppose if you're the kind of cat who keeps IRC logs in anticipation of future sour grapes, then I think you qualify as eccentric.
That's not a bad thing, but the rant is oddly reminiscent of some of Hans Reiser's rants.
2) B/c it has a great ORM layer (ActiveRecord) and strong ajax libraries (integration with prototype/script.aculo.us) which make it easy to quickly put together a very well organized app that has a lot of UI sizzle.
I also expect Merb to continue to gather steam, especially for people who "get" rails and who want to take it in specialized directions.