Well, although I did enjoy the rails framework quite a bit, it's certainly not the first framework I've ever worked with. I've built applications with struts, ASP.Net (1.0 and 2.0), JSF, Django, etc, and I really do think rails is my favorite yet. My apologies if that offended you at all, I'll try to retain a little more cynicism next time.
;)
Welcome! You are going to enjoy frameworks! They are really cool!
Those of us who don't have the time to try out so many new things would appreciate an essay on the subject of "why I, as a brand-new user, found Rails so much more fun than Django or .Net". If nothing else, it would be fun to have an iota of actual evidence that I can cite when I'm patting myself on the back for having chosen Ruby and Rails over the others.
Don't become cynical right away. The framework community is awash in cynics at the moment. There's a backlash, dontcha know, because folks are aghast that after three whole years of hard work Fred Brooks is still right: Rails and Django and CakePHP haven't made web programming as easy as sneezing. It's still just web programming. You type, and you type some more, and you get a brief glimpse of joy, and then you fire up IE 6.0, and you burst into tears. Some things never change.
See? Working too hard at the coal face can make me cynical too. So for god's sake have some fun and be proud of having fun. We could all use some enthusiasm!
Nah don't be cynical. I'm pretty sure most people had the same glowing reaction the first time they used Rails (or something like it). Heck, I still have to use Hibernate at the day job, so getting home to ActiveRecord and DataMapper just makes my day all over again every night.
