I’m reading the news on Twitter that a remarkable and wonderful thing has happened in the world of Ruby web developers: Rails and Merb are going to merge. Here are announcement posts from DHH and Yehuda Katz. And here is the requisite humorous site tracking whether the two are combined. As Matz says (by way of bryanl), “Love matters. It’s the greatest reason behind Ruby.”
Besides being encouraging to see two camps of alpha-geeks put ego aside for the common good, I think the rapprochement is tremendously good for the Ruby world and for web developers. The two camps are agreeing to take what’s best about each platform and put it in the new one. As a Rails developer, I get the Merb team’s improvements and advancements without having to choose a different platform. Merb developers get to practice their techniques within the Rails juggernaut and become Rails performance experts in the process. 2009 is already looking better.