[development] Form field maxlengths vs. database field sizes

[Chris Johnson]

> Ruby on Rails's ActiveRecord does this database->form mapping amazingly well. 
> We should take some of their concepts into Drupal, and I therefor encourage 
> everyone to do a 20 minute quickstart in RoR development. Just to get the 
> feeling of how Drupal /could be/ in this database mapping smartness!

Active Record is a standard OO pattern.  Ruby on Rails did not invent this 
idea.  It's been around for more than a decade.