[GLLUG] Best Web/Desktop Programming solution (...)

Sean O'Malley picasso at madflower.com
Tue Apr 19 14:34:37 EDT 2005


On Tue, 19 Apr 2005, Asenchi wrote:

> Java isn't open source, it is slow and it is bulkly in its LOC.  Java
> was one of the first really popular OOP languages, but there are
> better tools out there now.

I'm not dissing Ruby, but SmallTalk was pretty popular, Next(open)Step
which is integrated with MacOS X, was a pretty popular OOP languages.

Ruby is still in it's infancy, and you are talking about sending
a "N00b" programmer who wants RAD development apps (and I can only
assume a large codebase to borrow from.) to use Ruby. Which in
some respects the OO might be easier, but digging out documentation and
finding pre-written stuff to "borrow" from is another issue especially
when you hit a wall.

Now personally, I put RAD development into the "drag n' drop" catagory
especially when the aforementioned person, already said they were using
DreamWeaver which is one of the better Web RAD environments. I _assume_
(and quite possibly incorrectly) an an upgrade from Frontpage and they
grew up on VB and most of the apps are written in VB. I also assume, he
went out on a limb and is trying to upgrade their IT infrastructure and
talked his boss into this so it HAS to work.

Ruby still doesn't do compile down to bytecode (next version
supposedly), like Java or PHP(with Zend) so I am not sure how it is
getting all this speed or all the great memory efficiency. It took Java
about 5 years before people had tweaked the crap out of the interpreter to
get the speed out of it. Maybe Ruby borrowed some of that knowledge, I
don't know.

I think Ruby is a language worth learning, but if I was betting
my business. I would jump onboard with Java for this particular
application with the given the parameters.

The business argument goes kind of like this:
1 Can we get support for this?
2. If you leave is there anyone we can hire?
3. How stable and reliable has it been over the past 5-7 years?
4. Will it do what we want?
5. Is it scalable and tested?

then skip WAY down on the list and you will see:
1492. How popular will this technology be tommorrow?

And maybe in about 4 years, Ruby will be a more robust language and worth
looking in to. In the meantime, you have a business to run that has to
make it another 4 years or you need to keep your job. =)

<plink plink>

Sean




More information about the linux-user mailing list