ScribeMedia.org has a lot of excellent video content, not least of which a collection of talks from last years Railsconf. Here, for example, is David Heinemeier Hansson’s keynote.
The whole thing is interesting; but, a great quote? Certainly; at about 5:40 into the first segment, David says,
I don’t really think Rails currently is … in a position where it should bend to the outside world. I think we’re actually working very well at bending the outside world to us.
Dang! Well, keep in mind, he did start his talk by saying he was just going to take a short moment to be a little “arrogant.”
Rails is by no means the only great, new, web framework out there. There is Django, there is CakePHP, there are both FuseBox and Mach-ii (for Coldfusion and possibly PHP as well). There is the Zend Framework, a rather newer one, I believe. But for better or worse, Rails has tipped into something a lot larger than most people, probably, expected. It may or may not be “fair,” but it is what it is. I, for one, welcome our new Ruby on Rails overlords. Onward.
There is DEFINITELY a PHP port of Fusebox. Check out the PHP-fusebox group on Yahoo. Good stuff. I’ve written a couple of tutorials about fusebox too, available on my site.