A little less than a month ago, Obie Fernandez posed the question "What is the Rails Way (To You)?" For me, it took a little while to ponder that question and generate a response. This is what I came up with:

I see the Rails way encompassing two different stakeholders, the first being the individual, myself in this case, and the second being the community. I can't explain what 'the way' is without first identifying these two groups.

When talking about the community, I see the Rails way as embracing change. The Rails community seems to embrace a constant state of mild disruption. Some of the best corporations can't even deal with change as well as the Rails community. While some might argue that the precipitation of Rails 3 was a huge disruption, I would say that a Rails 3 type of disruption is quite rare. Mild disruption allows the community to vet ideas and practices and really reinforce what really works within the realm of web development. Something like BDD is an example of the reinforcing practices that have grown with the Rails community.

Personally, what the Rails way means for me is that it can mean anything. If I need a monolithic ERP system using Rails as my backend, I can do it. If I need to create a bunch of RESTful web services that are all interconnected, I can. 'The way' means that when I work with Rails, especially Rails 3, I can mold the framework around my needs knowing that Rails has quality baked in from the start.