Written by Tom Brooke (@tbrooke)
The inspiration for me was Jordan Byron's Mission of Mercy project. I associated Rails with Web apps and after firing up Mission of Mercy it opened my eyes to the fact that Rails makes a great platform for an app that may or may not live on the external web. Also I liked the way Jordan approached Rails as a tool to do some social and humanitarian good rather than just a tool to launch a startup and make a million dollars. I am learning Rails and my Law firm now runs on Clio which is a Rails app so I knew that Rails could be a good fit for a business platform
I had looked at database platforms like Access, at off the shelf software and even played with Salesforce some since they offer it free to nonprofits and nothing seemed to be a good fit. After seeing Mission of Mercy I wrote Jordan and told him that I was impressed with it and thought that something similar would be a good fit for Main Street Mission, he agreed, told me he was associated with Mendicant University, we got Corey on Board and here we are. The scales were an early thing with the joke about Rails on scales and one of the reasons that Jordan selected Corey was his skill with scales.
As it has developed I am very happy with the decision. Especially after two Railsconf's I believe that one of the biggest advantages of Ruby and Rails is the active and open community and the fact that both Ruby and Rails are open source. This is a perfect fit for Main Street Mission whose whole purpose is to be an open and caring community. There may be other languages and platforms that may be a better fit technically but there are no other languages with the huge community that is willing to jump in and help each other. It is the perfect way to carry the ethos of Main Street Mission out of China Grove and I think it is a good to way bring some of the ethos of the Rails community into China Grove and Main Street Mission
Rails also gives us some security because even if Mendicant University disappears any Ruby developer with a github account can pick up on our code and run with it. There are active Ruby communities in both Charlotte and Raleigh so we can get local help if we need it. Also hopefully the code will grow beyond us and other pantries can adopt it, modify it and help each other
Finally from a technical perspective Rails has the speed and more than enough sophistication to handle the project. It's user interface uses the tools of the web so we have everything from html to handlebars for us to work with. We have ten of thousands of gems to help us. We have a platform that embraces agile and behavior driven development which makes it perfect for our non technical folks to keep up with the techies
So where else other than Rails could we get Anne, Robin and Tom squared here in China Grove working with Corey in Pennsylvania, Jordan in Connecticut, Shane in Seattle and others yet to come working together on a project like this to help make it easier for a few folks in China Grove down on their luck to get something to eat.