Joy seems to be back.

It’s one of those words that sort of *fell out of favour* for a while. Are we too cool to be joyful? No one pretends that most of life isn’t the relentless pursuit of *happiness*, so what about Joy?

What are car commercials? Get the car, get the girl. Girl + car = happiness.

Happiness is a feeling. But joyfulness is a state of mind, perhaps even of *being*. Joy made the cut for the nine fruits of the spirit, and happiness didn’t. And Joy certainly fits better with the likes of Patience and Faithfulness.

So I remember thinking it was a little weird when the [Ruby on Rails website](http://www.rubyonrails.com/) proudly proclaimed that using Rails would lead to

> *writing real-world applications with joy and less code*

Was it just their [Danish programmer](http://www.loudthinking.com)’s incomplete grasp on the subtleties of the Western vernacular?

Or were they trying to say something here? Beyond, “using the product will make you happy”?

It might be just another marketing thing; [37s](http://37signals.com/) are extremely effective at generating buzz. But then John Gruber’s new thing office management solution appeared, called—wait for it—[Joyent](http://joyent.com/).

###Software Joy

So here’s where I’m stuck: The more I play with Rails, the more I like it; I realise that it represents a very fine union of a handful of ideas I’d already had. (and a bunch of other ingenious ones I hadn’t…) Except that instead of having them and filing them away as independent thoughts (as I had) someone actually went ahead and built a framework out of them.

Even though I’m still tripping over things and not quite sure what I’m doing, I can already tell that I *like* Rails, and I like Ruby.

But *joy*? That’s kind of a leap. And even more so for an office groupware suite. When joy isn’t exciting enough, are the slogans going to change?

With delirious excitement and less code? With extraordinary exuberance and less code?

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 8:26 am to Christianity.