Rails is opinionated software, but it isn't the opinions of its userbase; It is the opinions of DHH. If DHH/37 Signals isn't using it, it probably isn't going to make in to Rails core. I am not saying that this is a bad thing. Having the defaults based on a profitable, stable web app with millions of users isn't the worst idea.
> If DHH/37 Signals isn't using it, it probably isn't going to make in to Rails core. I am not saying that this is a bad thing.
That jQuery made it into Rails shows that it's not just DHH's app skeleton anymore; it remains to be seen if ActiveSupport will ever quit being DHH's junk drawer[1] though.
A while ago a 15-20 line patch was committed, which added the methods Array#second, Array#third, etc. These methods were added as syntactic sugar, in order to complement the built-in Array#first. What followed was a huge uproar on Reddit; people called the patch "bloat", claimed that Rails is growing into an uncontrollably large monster, etc. The uproar was not unlike the recent uproar about Coffeescript in size. DHH made fun of that by adding Array#forty_two.
So before every Rails release DHH should conduct a public poll? And what level of abstraction it should be? "Which JS framework should be made default" or "Should we have a default JS framework"? As you can see, it quickly becomes a mess. Opinions bring sanity.
