Sympact makes its first contribution to Merb

Well after embarking on the Merb path we are still yet to get our application live, we jumped in the day Merb went from 0.4.2 to 0.5.0 and came across some bugs which has lead to 0.5.2 scheduled for release today.  We thought we were on the edge when using edge rails but this pre 1.0 framework experience has redefined the edge for us and for the first time we took the matter into our own hands.  Today we submitted ticket #453 along with a patch for an issue we discovered.  The patch was approved and committed into the Merb repository within an hour of being opened.

This marks our first contribution to the Merb project and will no doubt not be our last.  This continues to show what the Engine Yard experience is like from a customer point of view.  You can safely stay on the edge (edge rails) or push to the bleeding edge with an entire team of supporters.  We started out working with an Engine Yard support and quickly ended up in the #merb irc room, and solved our own problem and are ready to deploy with the fixes.  EY's expertise allows us to be comfortable even when we are out on the very edge craving new features. The dynamic between the staff, our developers and the community blend into an experience I have yet to see anywhere else.

This is fun...and productive.

Merb!

I discovered Merb (Mongrel + eRB) while searching for a solution for accelerating a section of our application via a custom mongrel handler.  At first the idea of learning a new framework was ludicrous especially for a production app.  After doing some reading and a call with Engine Yard I realized it wasn't going to be unfamiliar territory as ActiveRecord was fully supported via their gem plugin system.

Merb happened to be started by Ezra Zygmuntowicz the co-founder of our new hosting provider Engine Yard.  EY also has two full time merb experts on staff.  EY has been quick to recommend using merb for issues like the ones we encountered and even though the framework is young and volatile .  If I was at any other hosting provider I would never even consider using something like this in production.  This has been one of the best things about EY, the trust for their Rails/Merb experts.  They know what they are doing.  And while at some points the effects of being on the edge can be felt (They removed the MERB_ROOT constant this release!), the benefits of running a lower footprint agile merb app should prove to be worth the minor tweaking.