Rails is just an API
Alex MacCaw (a member of my new Svbtle writing network), has published a great article on the future of Rails:
So what’s the future for Rails? If you talk to the likes of 37Signals and GitHub, it’s pjax and server side rendering. This involves fetching a partial of HTML from the server with Ajax, updating the page and changing the URL with HTML5 pushState. The advantages of this approach are clear. It’s simple, fits in well with the existing methodology and doesn’t require using much JavaScript.
I think this makes sense for web sites, but not web applications.
I think it’s hard for us, as technology people who use the web every day, to understand how big of an effect the click-wait model has on our thinking as we explore and use stuff on the internet. The future is absolutely client side. When I click on something, the interface should react instantly. There is no reason to talk to the server after every single request.
Despite 37signals and DHH’s denial, Rails is slowly evolving into a powerful API for running client side applications.
Update: Brad Gessler has more to add.