Or, rather, the Rails web app I've been working on for the past month can. After a very frustrating week of slack-ass-edness from Wachovia, we finally got stuff hooked up right for credit card donations to this new political action committee. So the big hurdle has officially been crossed - though at the cost of much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And the application is really coming together. The app's not very complex; it just accepts donations on behalf of others. What has truly impressed me this time around is the agility with which the framework handled the demands I put on it.
At some very inconvenient junctures, I've done one major domain model redesign on top of constant controller and view changes, I haven't yet done something that I feel is technically dubious. Everything has been pretty straight forward and in line with MVC philosophy. I've engaged in some "science experiments", trying to test out better ways of doing certain things I already knew how to do but suspected were accomplished better, but I was never stuck without a tool to get the job done if I needed it.
Rails has enabled me to create a very elegant app, due in no small part to my recent in-depth studies of Ruby. I've also been able to get the project done only slightly off schedule in a fraction of the normal development time. I don't know of any other programming experience where I've ever felt I've done as clean and thorough a job. And I really think that has a lot more to do with Rails than with me.
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