So Django has an interesting feature called “generic views”, which essentially allow you to to render a template with generic code. In Rails, the same feature would be called “generic actions” (just a terminology difference).

This was possible, but somewhat difficult in Rails 2.x, but it’s a breeze in Rails 3.

Let’s take a look at a simple generic view in Django, the “redirect_to” view:

In Ruby, we have the great fortune to have one major framework (Rails) and a number of minor frameworks that drive innovation forward. One of the great minor frameworks which has been getting a lot of traction recently is Sinatra, primarily because it exposes a great DSL for writing small, single-purpose apps.

Here’s an example of a simple Sinatra application.

I attended the Rails Underground conference in London at the weekend (July 24-25, 2009). As always seems to be the case at these events, I got the most value out of the more theoretical and opinion-based talks rather than 'how-to' style presentations.

What follows is an interview with Nicholas Wieland, CTO of Italy-based Zooppa, a fast growing social network for creative types. This is the second in a series of interviews I will carry out with interesting figures from the micro-ISV and startup scene. If you have a compelling story to tell, own or run a tech startup, and would like to be featured, please drop me a line via email.

It is one of life’s strange coincidences that in the week where Rack middleware was brought firmly into the spotlight in Railsland thanks to the introduction of Metal and the continuing transition of Rails to a Rack application that I finally had a need to write some middleware of my own.