Over the past few weeks, I have settled in at my new job. It is time to get back into the blogging universe. This should have happened awhile back, but I was caught up in the Ruby universe checking out everything that it has to offer. The project I find most compelling in the Ruby community currently is called Merb. It is a framework based in Ruby and modeled after frameworks like Rails. The main difference from Rails is its slim, clean code base. Having such a structured code base makes it much easier to bend to your will. Rails is infamous for forcing programmers to bend to its specifications. That meant if you wanted to do something outside of what the framework is meant for, you had to “hack” a workaround. Merb is much different since it encourages users to bend the framework to new and innovative ways. This is all achieved through the minimal code inside the framework. In comparison, Rails is absolutely massive. It is not only the kitchen sink, but the entire house! If you get a chance it is definitely something worth playing around with or even contributing to :)