Everyone in the forums said to just take an hour going through a tutorial to find out what was so cool about RORs.  So I did.  I mean, shit some other dude spent 2 days arguing about why he thinks it stinks even though he doesn't have time to try it out.

Anyway, the tutorial I went through was of course old, so a few things had changed, but I got it all working.  Took me about 1.5 hours because of the changes.  The tutorial also said at some points that...you should be REALLY impressed with what just happend, mainly with the scaffolding stuff.

Well, I was, and I wasn't.  I'm guessing that to a user that has been using PHP, JSP, or ASP for their development the stuff would have been more suprising. To me, it wasn't.

What they were showing was how you can build a data-driven app that dynamically changes with your database.  Looks great for prototyping, but if I wanted to get into formatting data, or the interface itself, you have to change stuff.  Sounds pretty much like how ASP.NET 2.0 is working with DataSources and it's data components.  Sure, you can use SqlDataSource (or ObjectDataSource) to just pump out a prototype, but for a working app?  No way.  Anything that requires formatting or distinct SQL statement is going to be a little more work.

The MVC framework it puts you in is fine.  I think I do similar with the presentation layer (front-end), business layer (middle-tier) and data layers (back-end).  Also, I can use a code generator to create my BL, and DL for me so all I would have to do to prototype is use VS 2k5's visual tools.  The thing is, my app is more complex than simple CRUD operations so I will eventually have to write more complex BL methods.

So bottom line: RORs seems great to prototype in, but geez, so does ASP.NET 2.0.  Sticking with 2.0 for now...