In our continuing interview series... er, our second interview ever (check out our first with Lingr)... we interview Menuism, a Chicago/Seattle-based startup founded by Justin Chen and John Li. Menuism, which has been in public beta since October, is a community site focused on user-contributed restaurant reviews. We're always interested in hearing about folks who are coming over to Rails from other technologies (especially Microsoft ones, of course)... and putting together real businesses while, at the same time, building their skills with a new technology. If you're in the same boat as the guys from Menuism, let us know if you'd be interested in being interviewed here too. Read on to see what the guys have to say, and support a fellow Rails startup by stopping by Menuism to "rate what you ate".

Brian: So tell us about Menuism.

Justin: Menuism is a community-based restaurant guide focused on food. Diners can rate what they ate at restaurants. We feel the more detailed information the better when making choices about restaurants.

Brian: So it's different than something like say, Yelp, because it's focused solely on restaurants and the dishes they offer?

Justin: Exactly. We've built the site so that diners can contribute any and as much information about a restaurant as they want with reviews just being one part of it. Photos of the menu, photos of the food, menu links, related links to other reviews, tags, etc. We've tried to make the design and the interactions with points/tips as engaging as possible.

Brian: So Justin, you worked at HP before this. And John, you were at Microsoft. And you made the leap to doing this full-time.

Justin: Yup, that's right. About 1 year ago, we met up during MLK weekend to talk about starting something up, had a massive brainstorming session, then gave 2 week notice the next work day. Nothing like a 180 degree turn to spice up life. :)

Jeff: What kind of background did you guys have before doing this? Programmers, designers, or both?

Justin: We both studied EECS at UC Berkeley and graduated in 2001, so our education is in programming. At HP, I actually didn't program much though, since I did Technology Strategy for services and IT.

John: HP and Microsoft have worked together successfully in the past, so we figured we'd have some karma going for this project. :) At Microsoft I worked as a developer, and then as Program Manager on the Windows Mobile team.

Brian: So working for HP and Microsoft, you were probably exposed to more "enterprise" technologies like .NET, Java, etc. Why did you choose Ruby on Rails?

John: Coming into the project, our web development experience wasn't in any of the leading technologies, so we chose RoR based on its easy learning curve and flexibility.

Jeff: So how similar/different was Ruby from your prior language? I came from C++ and then C#, so at first, it was very odd for me.

John: I used to code in C++, so Ruby was a refreshing change from that. The biggest plus was the garbage collection, which lets you focus more on the algorithms and not so much on managing the objects you're using. I've found that Ruby lets me turn my thoughts into (working) code much more rapidly than C++.

Justin: When we were in college, I worked at a startup called WeVest.com (bankrupt and gone now) and we used Java on the ATG Dynamo app server. The biggest difference for me is the flexibility of ruby. In retrospect, Java is very "heavy" and much stricter which makes things more time consuming to develop.

Brian: And have you found the ease of learning Rails to be as advertised?

Justin: Yes and no. I think it depends on what kind of background you come in with. Both of us weren't necessarily up to speed on all the web technologies when we started, so we probably had a little more learning to do. Once we got past the initial hurdle, then things did pick up much quicker. However, there are times when we wonder - well, we can do it this way in ruby, but what is the "right way"? That's probably where we struggle the most.

Jeff: So you quit, started working on your new project... how long was it until you had something resembling what we see now at Menuism.com?

Justin: So we started the learning in mid-February, had a closed alpha in the summer of 2006 (June/July), then a closed beta around August, and finally opened the site publicly in October. It was opened with a soft launch and we're planning to push much more publicly in the coming months.

Brian: Can you tell us about something particularly challenging you ran into or something that you guys are doing on Menuism that may be different than your "typical" web development project?

John: Given our previous experience, most everything seems pretty atypical. :)

Justin: One of the big things with our site is that it's very relationship heavy - lots of data is highly interconnected. Definitely not as straightforward as a blog or other content sites like that.

Jeff: Was there anything about Rails that surprised you in particular?

Justin: The biggest thing is just the newness of rails and the lack of strong documentation.

John: Right, and specifically finding the right way to accomplish a certain thing.

Jeff: Yes, it can be hard to get past the textbook examples

Justin: Otherwise the framework has been great, and the community is amazing.

Jeff: What operating systems do you guys use?

Justin: So I develop on Mac, John develops on Windows, and we deploy on Solaris. Fun stuff!

Brian: Interesting! How does that work out? Solaris because you've had experience with it in the past?

Justin: Surprisingly well. There are some gotchas every now and then when commands don't match (Solaris, Windows). Actually, not much Solaris experience, but the TextDrive containers sounded like an interesting solution to try.

John: And using different OSes to develop ensures we have good coverage across different browsers.

Brian: John, do you feel like it's a challenge developing on Windows when the vast majority of the Rails world is on Mac?

John: Good question - I'd say that there are some extra initial hurdles to overcome, but otherwise for "standard" coding, RadRails on Windows has worked great for me.

Brian: I know people always ask us the same thing (though I'm a switcher). In my experience, the challenge isn't really Rails, it's getting used to the whole POSIX-style shell, subversion, etc.

John: Ah, I'll need to follow up with you on your switching experience later. :)

Jeff: And so you guys use Capistrano for deployment?

Justin: Yeah, we do. Capistrano has worked quite well for us, we had to change some of the default commands to work with Solaris, but we don't have any complaints after taking some to figure out how to set it up.

Jeff: As far as Rails goes, is there anything in 1.2 that would change your design, had you known about it before? There's kind of a push toward more REST-ful architectures. Is there a way that would apply to your application?

John: We haven't had time to look closely at the changes in 1.2, but we expect there would be some changes we'd have to make. Had we known about the REST-ful architecture changes earlier, we could have designed things to fit better.

Justin: Nothing is coming to mind right now, since we haven't had much time to think about it. As we try to focus on the business as a whole, it's difficult to try to keep up with every single change and trend. In the beginning, when the focus was more on web development, we tried to keep up with all the technology advances, but as our priorities have shifted more towards business opportunities, our focus on living on the edge has diminished.

Brian: John, you're in Seattle, is that right? And Justin is in Chicago. How's it been working on a project when you're in two different cities?

John: Right, I'm out in Seattle. It's been an interesting experience running a distributed operation. It's tougher in the beginning when more face-time is required for planning, but at this point we have our work routines pretty well set. In fact, we've found that being in two places lets us take advantage of the networking opportunities that come along in both cities, which has worked to our advantage.

Brian: Before we wrap it up, what's next for Menuism? Any super-secret new thing in the works you'd want to share?

Justin: So starting in February, we're launching a monthly promotion called "Menuism Food Fights". These will be where we settle the question, once and for all, who has the best burger, fries, or pancakes based on popular opinion. We'll be giving out prizes to the best reviewers and publishing a list of the best food at the end of the month. Each month we'll choose a different food to highlight. We'll be announcing more details in the coming week, so be sure to stay tuned and participate!

Jeff: That's a great idea.

Brian: Love it. Please don't do Chicago pizza. Because it all stinks.

Jeff: (says the New Yorker)

Jeff: (Chicago pizza is the best)