ALT Rails

“ALT .NET” describes a coalescing community of like-minded individuals within the larger world of the Microsoft® .NET Framework who felt a growing frustration that Microsoft tooling, guidance, and .NET culture at large did not reflect or support an essential set of core values.[¹]

The goal of ALT Rails is similar in practice. The idea is to have guidance when building the Ruby on Rails application to support a business in the most cost-effective way possible.

Pick the right tool

Pragmatic developers use whatever works, always looking for a better way.

If Ruby on Rails is not serving the team, there’s no need to keep using the tool. The consequence of pushing forward with a framework deserving of the team is increased development and operational costs.

Adopt best practices

Looks outside of the community to adopt best practices from everywhere.

Everybody is using a particular tool in a way for a reason. Ruby on Rails inspired other communities in the software industry. It is time to take back from those communities what makes them tick. Let’s find out what defenses are learning and share what we can.

For instance, Agile processes and Design Patterns started with Smalltalk. Likewise, Inversion of Control tools and techniques originated in Java.

Reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Elixir.[¹]

Focus on continuous improvement and simplification

Software success requires iteration, learning, and progress. We’re all experimenting with techniques to connect coding and testing more to the business domain.

Maintainable code means good design. Good design arises from the application of design knowledge accrued after many experiments. The goal is to simplify the code to clarify business rules. Understand the value of simplification and keep looking for ways to improve the code-base.

Principles and Knowledge over Tooling

Realize that tools are great, but what matters are principles and knowledge.

Tools are great, but they only take a business so far. Understanding the principles and knowledge is what matters.

The best tools embedded the knowledge and encouraged the principles. Furthermore, the essential attributes of a solution are maintainability and sustainability.

What matters is Business value, not technology.

The primary purpose of engineering is to support a business, not any particular technology.

Technology is a means to an end, which is to make a business more efficient through automation.

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[¹]: docs.microsoft.com (2008): { End Bracket }: What Is ALT .NET? (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2008/march/%7b-end-bracket-%7d-what-is-alt-net)