2009
What Web Frameworks Are Missing
The single biggest feature common web frameworks like Rails are missing out of the box is credit card payments.
Right now, no one bothers implementing credit card payments until a site has become “production”. Single-person projects or small startups don’t bother making this at first b/c they would much rather spend their time running up hill, prototyping new, hard, or interesting features. Credit card payments, on the other hand, are a simple yet difficult-to-get-right chunk of software. So unless it’s already done, no startup wants to waste its time doing it.
This is bad in the long-run for everyone, including end-users, b/c the default is to offer (often innovative and really great) services for free, which means only already-funded teams or people with lots of extra time can even get to the point of making something.
If this feature existed, were packaged up neatly, and were as dead-simple as Rails scaffolding, small projects could default to whatever payment scheme actually made sense — like pay-per-use, donations, trial periods, first 5 free, etc. — making it possible to fund the really great products out there, instead of forcing them to rely on ads (which require high traffic) or outside funding (which often ruins the product, takes ownership away from the creator, and has a much higher barrier to entry).
In a real physical store, people expect to pay. If the person on the other side of the counter gives me something for free (w/o buying anything at all), I say “Are you serious??” and walk away bewildered. But online, I almost expect it. This is bad! Because now everyone expects it, and people trying to make great things can’t focus on actually doing that b/c they are too busy trying to figure out how to make it great and free.
Oftentimes, there are free things out there online that I like so much that I would like to pay for, but there’s simply no easy way to do it. And I’m not alone. I use tipjoy and have donated to things that have a PayPal donation setup like Auditorium, but I don’t see these as adequate.
The best thing out there that I’ve seen is RailsKits. But as far as I understand, they aren’t packaged properly so that I can add them to my site whenever I please like a plugin or gem.
Is there something out there I just don’t know about? What is it? If not, please, someone make this! (And yes, if it’s good, I might even pay for it.)
