Why are Ruby Applications So Elegant?

I’ve had a bad case of Mac/Ruby envy lately.  I’ll post more on the Mac thoughts later, this post is about Ruby on Rails.

If you don’t know what RoR is, then maybe you should go to the website and take a look.

I keep seeing these Ruby applications that are so simple, elegant, and useful.  Take tadalist for example.  This is a painfully simple application but it works the way I want it to and it’s always available.

I use tadalist more than I use Outlook’s todo list interface.

It’s just so much cleaner, it’s always available, and it doesn’t get in your way.

Maybe this is due to the “ruby way” of thinking.  I have seen countless applications written in JSP or ASP.NET that just look like someone vomited html all over the page.  Where are all of the interaction designers in the .NET space?

Another Ruby application that I have seen that I think is incredibly useful and elegant is Basecamp.  This is a project management utility that is basically the Anti-Microsoft Project.  They took all of the things that they didn’t like about Project and built Basecamp, stripping down tons of features to boil down into the a simple, useful project collaboration application.  Check out the screenshot to see what I mean.  The interface is slick, and it has everything you need to know, right there.

I used this to collaborate on a small project and found it to be incredibly intuitive.

It isn’t intuitive because it was written in Rails.  It is intuitive because the people behind it are brilliant.  And these particular brilliant people swear by Rails.

Every time I try to use Project to get a hold of the overall picture of my current project I get lost, and I don’t see much value in that beast of an application.

Thoughtworks is jumping in as well into the ruby space.  In a recent interview with Martin Fowler, he claimed that somewhere around 60% of their consulting work is in Ruby now.  60%!  I find that very hard to ignore.  Check out their newest online application for managing agile projects:  it’s called Mingle, and it looks awesome.

I’ve found 2 more ruby examples that I am really keen on:  Warehouse and Lighthouse.

• The typical ruby developer is also a Mac user.
• the typical Mac user appreciates design.
• The mantra of “less is more” radiates from the language (Ruby), the web framework (Rails), and the interface.

I’m really jealous of the work that some of these folks are doing.  This is contributing to my Mac Envy, which I will post on later.

Am I just becoming a fan-boy?  What do you think?