As an enthusiastic RoR developer, I came a cross to a rather innovative framework for Rails, called Hobo. Where the Rails advertizes itself with do-it-yourself blog in 15 minutes, the Hobo takes this a step further introducing the same in 2 minutes.
One of the Hobo's greatest features is the declaration of datafields inside the models. Using the source code from models Hobo can generate the migrations automatically, hence keeping the database and source code always up to date. I hope this would be something to be merged into Rails 3.
The View-layer is where the Hobo really shines. The introduced tag based template language DRYML keeps the code extremely brief and consistent. The iterations for the look and usability of the web application, might take a big portion of the total project work load. But with Hobo redefining tags is lightweight and powerful tool to modify the output of each tag. I have to say the guys at Hobo have come the very close the their ultimate goal: "don’t program your application, just declare it."
But to feel what Hobo is all about, there’s nothing like trying it, so why not take a look at two minute Hobo app.