The Wow Factor

One thing that I find Perl to be lacking is a “wow” factor. Something so easy and awesome that within 5 minutes you’re sold on it. I was reminded of these after starting a side project with Ruby on Rails and Heroku.

This is my 3rd foray into Rails. I briefly worked on the initial version of OrgSync in 2007 with Rails 1.2. I came back to do a small website (since switched to WordPress) in 2009 using Rails 2.3. Now I’m back on the train in 2011 with 3.0.7. Every time I’ve ventured in I’ve come out deeply impressed and this time it is even more so because of Heroku. I went from never having read anything about it to having an app up and running in hours. And a lot of that time was spent just browsing their documentation. I could have done it in 15 minutes. The pain of Rails hosting I experienced in the past is simply gone. And it is free to get started. Everything about the process is designed to minimize the amount of friction a new user experiences, all the way from creating a Rails app, creating some scaffolds, and installing it on Heroku.

Maybe Stackato or DotCloud can provide some “wow” for Perl. Until then I’m pretty stoked to be riding the Rails again.