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Comment by rohitarondekar | Hacker News Reader

You are not forced to use SASS and Coffeescript. You can just switch them off. You can also switch off the asset pipeline.

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That wasn't the argument I was making. My argument was if those are the new technologies you want to play with, you don't need a major new Rails release. Since the opposing argument seems to be that Rails needs to keep breaking compatibility in order to keep up with the latest technologies.

Actually Rails 3.1 has a lot more features then just the Asset Pipeline and SASS/Coffeescript default. This blog post lists most of them: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/5/22/rails-3-1-release-ca...

Also there are a lot of deprecated things that must have been removed in 3.1 ― TBH I haven't kept in touch with 3.1 development but I'm sure a lot more has happened besides the default switch and Asset Pipeline. :)

Basically in the end, Rails is a curated framework. It either fits your requirements or it doesn't. There is no need for it to work for "all possible" cases.

Also like I said you don't have to use the defaults. :)

> Rails is a curated framework. It either fits your requirements or it doesn't.

"Opinionated" was the original description. "Curated" is just some buzzword that means "people look after it" rather than "automatically generated", which is, uh, pretty much going to be par for the course for a maintained framework.

"Here's the Rails gospel: Promote good ideas and technologies. See Ajax, REST, Atom, testing. Rails is a curated set of tech choices." ― DHH

source: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/58286524151775232

DHH saying it does not make it any less of a silly buzzword. I much prefer his original "opinionated", as it much more clearly gets at the heart of what Rails is, that it doesn't try and be everything to everyone.

Curated does not just mean "people look after it." It also means that people make editorial choices about what belongs and what doesn't.

So pretty much like most software ever developed?

"Opinionated" communicates the idea so much better - it means not only that yes, some choices were made, but that some of them are the result of strong opinions, and do not necessarily try and accommodate all points of view.

Hang on while I grab my beret.

The link you posted above to the blog post describing Rails 3.1 seems to be broken.

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