I love Ruby, but last year I found myself at the Smithsonian Institution coding in, of all things, PHP & Drupal. And I realized that despite my ambivalence towards those technologies, I had no compelling-enough reason to propose Ruby as an alternative. How did we get to this point? I’ll tell 3 reasons we didn't use Ruby, and reflect on whether these are things we want, or problems we should solve.

1. 3 Reasons Not
to Use Ruby
@ultrasaurus

2. I love Ruby

4. Bridge Foundry

6. User Centric Design
Agile Development
US Government

8. http://bit.ly/exec-order-open-data

10. 19 museums
15 archives
23 libraries
9 research centers

11. with over...
137Million specimens, art works and other treasures...
136,000 cubic feet
of archival material

28. 5M plant specimens

29. 3.7 M
without
digital
records

30. This
is the
record
(structured data)

33. Why Ruby?

34. Flexibility
Test Framework
Software Evolution

35. Why Not Ruby?

36. #1
CMS

39. #1
Ruby CMS?

40. 1,200,000
900,000
600,000
300,000
0
Locamotive
Alchemy
Radiant
Browser CMS
Comfortable!
Mexican Sofa
Refinery
Drupal 7
Drupal 6
Downloads
Active Installs

41. 1,200,000
900,000
600,000
300,000
0
Locamotive
Alchemy
Radiant
Active Installs
Browser CMS
Comfortable!
Mexican Sofa
Refinery
Drupal 7
Drupal 6
Ruby CMS?

43. #2
High Level Components

46. I can build a blog in
5 minutes!

48. CODE

49. #3

50. #3
Biggest Challenge
is not code

51. So what?

52. Framework Choice
leads to
Language Choice

53. CMS
CODE
time
100%
0%

54. CMS CODE
time
100%
0%
BIG REWRITE

55. Frameworks
are
Patterns for How we Work

56. Ever notice that the top
Ruby CMS options
are all Rails apps…?

58. A Few Notes on NotAlone.gov
http://18fblog.tumblr.com/post/85232393363/a-few-notes-on-notalone-gov

59. Ecosystem of Components
as Important as
the Language Itself

60. Component Ecosystem?
separate pieces assembled by a developer

63. OmniAuth

64. OmniAuth
Bootstrap

65. OmniAuth
Bootstrap

66. What we do not automate
we are doomed to repeat.

67. What will you
make happen?