

The easiest way to add recommendations to your Rails app: acts_as_edgy - wheels
http://blog.directededge.com/2011/03/15/the-easiest-way-to-add-recommendations-to-your-rails-app-announcing-acts_as_edgy/

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tomkarlo
They really need to port this to Rails 3. At this point, any new app I'm
building is Rails 3, and any old app I have, I'm reluctant to add something
that will make upgrading harder.

~~~
wheels
Assuming there's some uptake on this version we'll almost certainly produce a
Rails 3 port. New apps aren't actually a great target for recommendations
since they don't have much data around and since there are still far more
Rails 2 deployed than Rails 3 apps around it seemed like a better target for
the first version.

~~~
tomkarlo
Understood, but arguably a lot of those Rails2 apps are not being actively
updated, or they would have been rolled over to Rails3 by now.

Anyhow, add me to the list of those who would be very interested in a Rail3
version.

~~~
wheels
It's interesting that you say that -- and I don't mean this to be contentious
-- I've genuinely had the opposite impression. Unfortunately HN's a bad place
to get a sense for such things since it tends to be way ahead of the curve.
(i.e. things like Node and Scala appear far more mainstream reading HN than
they are in practice.)

Most of the folks I know working on Rails 2 sites have only started taking
Rails 3 seriously in the last month or two and don't seem to be in a hurry to
upgrade.

It'd be interesting to see a curve of when major rails deployment cut over (if
they do). I wonder if there's a tell-tale Rails 3 signature that could be used
combined with e.g. an 80legs crawl?

~~~
patio11
Not major, but just anecdotally, all of my Rails apps are 2.x and I have no
plans to migrate within 6 months.

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3pt14159
I just finished implementing this (albeit way more crudely (runs on CRONs &
Rake tasks) and most likely less accurately) for a client. After I was done I
was like "hey, this could totally be its own app." One day later...

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jpallen
Services like this significantly reduce the barrier to entry for complicated
web apps. I've been mulling over an idea for a while now but it would tricky
to implement. With the discovery of Directed Edge and a few other services
it's now a minor technical hurdle. I can shift my thinking away from how to
build the technology and onto how to execute the idea well, something that
hasn't had nearly enough thought yet. I think services like this making
innovation much easier.

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andrewjshults
Has anyone used the underlying recommendation service (or another similar
service)? This definitely seems like it could be a huge time saver for a
number of sites, but it's hard to tell from the site what people's impressions
of the recommendation quality is.

~~~
wheels
A few links that might be useful:

Shopify add-on, using the same engine (with a different face):

<http://apps.shopify.com/directed-edge-expressrex>

Write-up by one of our customers:

[http://www.jonathanbriggs.com/ecommerce/33-of-revenue-
expres...](http://www.jonathanbriggs.com/ecommerce/33-of-revenue-expressrex-
recommendation-engine-recommended,814,AR.html)

Quora answer by an API user (at that time had already integrated, wasn't live
yet):

<http://www.quora.com/How-good-is-Directed-Edge>

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kunley
Althought interesting product, it just makes me believe that many people are
using ORMs simply because they don't have SQL under their belt.

The query they describe as 'monstrosity' is actually easy, understandable &
typical stuff to do on the relational db. When I was taught CS stuff, you
consciously chose relational db just because you could do things like that. If
you didn't plan it, you wouldn't use such db in the first place.

My point is, why to popularize the approach that you should run away from SQL
as much as possible and not tune it to your needs? Because that's what authors
propose. SQL is not XX-century obsolescence and is not hard to learn. I always
thought people, as me, are using ORMs to utilize some convenient coding
pattern, not to be hopefully in a safe distance from all that SQL thingy. Am I
so naive?

~~~
adelevie
>My point is, why to popularize the approach that you should run away from SQL
as much as possible and not tune it to your needs?

It's a business decision. More developers will use their product if it's
easier to integrate. ActiveRecord acts_as_blank plugins are fairly simple to
write and even easier to use.

Angry VC: Well why aren't more people using Directed Edge?

DE CEO: We could have built this plugin but we want more people to be fluent
in raw SQL. It's better for the craft of CS.

I understand where you're coming from, but the benefit of using an ORM should
be quite obvious in this case.

Also, I found that the more I understood about SQL, the more pleasant it was
to use ActiveRecord. Sometimes its "magic" can be a pain, but when it works,
it really works well. I can't help but smile when I think of all the time it's
saved me.

~~~
kunley
OK I can see a business plan in it and I can't blame people for choosing one
way of earning money over another.

Still this is quite sign of the times we live in. If someone's putting most of
his service from the pieces hosted elsewhere, what it will be? I can say that
it'll be probably sloooow ;)

Anyway I share your sentiment towards ORMs, with a little difference that I
prefer data mapper (as a pattern) over active record (as a pattern). Active
record locks you in the ghetto where the only primary source of the schema
information are your artificially crafted ORM-dependent tables, where in data
mapper the database itself can give this information to you via reflection of
the "real" tables. This is priceless when dealing not only with legacy
databases but also with effects of ad-hoc operational fixes, which in turn can
save your production sometimes. Data mapper has got also object identities
right.

------
metanoize
I really would love to have this work with my new RoR3 app!

~~~
anarchitect
Ditto!

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dholowiski
Holy crap, recommendation as a service. I had this idea 3 months ago, any
chance of me getting a royalty? I was going to suggest having a free
'developer' account, but then I saw it in small writing at the bottom of the
page. I'm in - this is freaking awesome!

~~~
getsat
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318849>

~~~
dholowiski
Thanks, it was a joke.

