Ruby superstar Jim Weirich gives an insightful overview of the environment that led to Rails, showing how it strikes a balance between PHP and Java. We’ve seen this bisection played out culturally as well, with widespread Rails adoption by designers and enterprise Java programmers alike.

Jim prefaces his talk by saying it isn’t technical but more of an introduction to Rails. Don’t let that dissuade you from watching. He presents a very lucid and concise illustration of how Rails has positioned itself amongst the old garde, cherry picking the best of both worlds.

The video is not to be missed. Jim’s rapid fire style of presentation is a site to behold. Great stuff.