

The Day Merb Joined Rails - KB
http://rubyonrails.org/merb

======
smoody
"On December 23rd, we decided to end the duplication and the paradox of
choice."

Let's be clear about one thing: They didn't eliminate "the paradox of choice,"
they eliminated "choice." The Paradox of Choice comes into play when there are
so many choices that people have difficulty making a choice at all -- like 23
varieties of white bread. The Paradox of Choice does not come into play when
there are two choices. But I guess this was destined to happen because
eliminating choice has been the philosophy of the Rails team all along.

BTW, the book "The Paradox of Choice" is a great read and every hacker should
read it. And the best part is that you don't even have to read it all the way
to the end to 'get it.'

[http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-
Less/dp/006000...](http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-
Less/dp/0060005696/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230085613&sr=8-1)

(Yes, this is my second rant on this topic. I will shut up now).

~~~
yan
That book was a great read. Here's his talk at TED for a taste what it's
about:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_par...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

------
ruby_roo
I'm still tripping on this. Not sure what to think of it yet. It _sounds_ like
it could be quite awesome.

------
greaterscope
amazing. i'm all for a less-cluttered field of choices.

anyone know of another high-profile project that has merged with a
"competitor"?

~~~
moxy
From jm4:

"Compiz and Beryl. Beryl forked from Compiz and, if I remember correctly,
relations were very sour between the two projects. Several months later they
merged into Compiz Fusion."

~~~
aaronblohowiak
...and it was awesome!

------
ryanwaggoner
I'm not a Ruby guy, so I may be completely off here, but it struck me as kind
of inaccurate to describe Merb as "an alternative Rails stack"...I thought
Merb was an alternative _to_ the Rails stack?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
To disambiguate: It was a separate project, with similar goals and similar,
though meaningfully improved, architecture.

------
andr
Cool. Can we get some Django news now, please? :)

~~~
undertoad
Merge Pylons. ;)

~~~
Tritis
Merge SqlAlchemy

