This is a potentially off topic question, but what is the average wage that the typical sculptor makes, considering hours invested/sale price of the art? I have known at least a few former art student friends/family that have definitely worked for less than minimum wage.
Is it possible for an artist to create a piece like this that is actually more profitable for the user of the art than it is for the artist who created it?
This program is great in my opinion. Even it is 1.0 (actually 1.1 is out already) state, it add a lot of features that a text editor doesn't have. My top favorites include:
1. Refactoring, especially really simple ones like rename method are highly useful.
2. Built in local history including side by side diffs with your version control system.
3. Middle mouse to 'jump to source'. Ever come across a method and go 'WTF is this?'. One click and you can jump right to the Ruby or Rails method source code. This can be extremely helpful for new developers learning RoR.
4. Integrated testing support to run single tests within the UI. (Textmate does have this too)
And last time I checked, Textmate seemed to be a pretty popular text editor with the Ruby community, and that runs about $60 US currently. Unless your time as a developer is valueless, laying out $100 can easily be justified if it saves you exactly 1 hour of productivity over its life time.
Paying for good tools that save time is smart business.
Given how amazing JetBrains' IDEA product was for the Java IDE world at the time, I can only imagine how much better this tool will get over time, especially if the Ruby Community starts using it.
Most web design shops which build websites for clients will end up using some form of Content Management System, to allow those clients to maintain the site after launch. BrowserCMS is a solution to our firm's problem, which is wanting the productivity of Rails for building custom websites, but giving clients Web CMS tools to maintain the site after launch.
I'm the product manager for BrowserCMS, so hopefully I can shed some light on the 'whys' behind the project. It is certainly not to clone Drupal in Rails. Drupal is mentioned in the presentation because many developers are familiar with it, so the enviable first question I hear is 'How is BrowserCMS like Drupal?'.
Our intent with BrowserCMS is to provide a client friendly CMS. Making a site maintainable and understandable by non-technical users is the primary goal of the CMS. We also want to allow Rails developers to be able to customize sites. We do have a module system (different than Drupal's), which allows developers to build custom modules (News, Events Calendars, Blog, etc). The dynamic content can be placed by non-technical users on pages. Obviously, it's a new project though (still in Beta), so we are about ~4500 modules behind Drupal here.