"Build bulletproof web applications with Rails 2.0!" Or some such. That was the blurb for a recent book from Sitepoint (the Australian firm that cranks out a web-related book about every week, whether it's timely and needed or not, and promotes it with lame and chirrupy copy).

Bulletproof! That was also the first thing I thought of today upon waking. Because one thing my little foray into Ruby on Rails did not lead me to was a bulletproof, easy-peasy application. It took me a week or two just to get this app up and working. Then it fell down yesterday for no good reason (so far as I could tell). Surely a bulletproof application does not fall down for anything short of nuclear war or hack-attack by a teenage Turk. And in my half-sleep I lay there, wondering , "Is Ruby on Rails a fad going noplace? Fragile, unscalable? Falling down for no good reason? Was this just my Frog of 2008, kissed but still unkissable?"

 It turned out that there was nothing wrong with my website; the problem was that my webhost had upgraded Rails to a new version. And what do you know, this usually makes Ruby on Rails apps fall-down-go-boom. Right now I'm inclined to think that in two years' time we won't be hearing much more of Ruby on Rails.