Ruby on Rails

David Heinemeier Hansson doesn't think of himself as a programmer.  But, in his native Denmark, he dabbled with PHP, which is a web language.

 

He later moved to Chicago, where he was asked to devleop a web application.  He decided that, instead of PHP, he would try Ruby.

 

Well, he fell in love with Ruby because he thought it was simple, minimal, and beautiful.  He then went on to develop a toolbox for Ruby, which he called Ruby for Rails.  He and his company released it as open-source, and now he is hailed as a big celebrity.

 

Ruby on Rails should further feed the cheap revolution.  It allows small teams to create quick web applications.  It should help small companies compete against the likes of IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft.

 

For example, after Hurricane Katrina, a small team from Earthlink used Ruby on Rails to set up a website for survivors to re-connect.  It was up and running in less than one day.