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

[Asenchi]

On 4/19/05, Jeremy Bowers <jerf at jerf.org> wrote:
> Note, I'm not saying it sucks. I'm saying it's setting off alarm bells,
> and you just triggered a couple more.

I am aware of this.  As long as you are aware that I am not saying Python sucks.
 
> > I wouldn't call Basecamp a small project by any stretch of the
> > imagination.  And if you simply took their 'sound bites' alone, it
> > would be difficult to come up with any other conclusion than that
> > Rails is pretty beefy and production ready.
> 
> Alarm bell: Everyone keeps pointing at the same one project.

Well for such a new framework to run 'thousands' of users in the
capacity that Basecamp runs them, I think it is pretty safe to point
at.  Of course it is new, but for a new frame work to run like this,
it is pretty spectacular.

> Not an alarm bell, but just in general: Sound bites are useless,
> *especially* coming from advocates. Application development with Mozilla
> has great soundbites too, but it empirically sucks.

I encourage you to read this blog and comments:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/000606.php

Granted it is from the guy who dev'd Rails, however he is a
'experienced programmer'.
 
> > I am not sure what you mean by limiting,
> 
> A framework, almost by definition, functions by making some things
> easier at the cost of making some things harder. The term "impedance
> mismatch" comes from here; it's often used in the context of one
> programming framework, Object orientation, trying to hook up to a data
> framework, SQL, but the idea has general applicability. Based on the
> fact that I have only mostly seen
> 
> > I am a n00b programmer
> 
> n00b programmers singing the praises of Ruby on Rails, I am concerned
> that the people generating the hype are not sufficiently experienced to
> judge the tradeoffs.

Well it sounds like the OP'er was going to be jumping into unknown
territory so that is my testimony as to how Ruby made life easier. 
And so far, those tradeoffs have been less lines of code and faster
benchmarks.  I am trying to find this site, however it seems to be
down.  Here is the Slashdot post for it:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/1520227&tid=156&tid=1

Pretty interesting.  I wish the site was still up.

> 
> I also find it highly likely that the primary advantage is simple that
> *it's written in Ruby*, which almost by default makes it much better
> than a Java app, but gives it no particular advantage over Python and
> not much over Perl. I also find that the criticisms people level against
> "other" apps when promoting Ruby on Rails don't apply to anything I
> actually use, just Java or Microsoft solutions. Again, alarm bells.
> 
> > , and I found Python to be difficult to
> > understand due to some of its logic.   This is of course my opinion,
> > it is not a cut on Python for its strengths (yes it has many).  I have
> > just found Ruby in particular to make more sense and allow for
> > programming (anything) to be fun.  Not to mention the ease of learning
> > it.
> 
> I find it highly likely this is unusual. Explaining Ruby's habits of
> passing blocks around will be very difficult to most non-programmers.
> It's all easy and obvious, *after* you understand it, and it's all
> pretty easy and obvious to me too, now. But that's not normal.

No, this is not true.  It was very easy to understand.  It made
programming much easier, when I knew exactly what was being passed. 
Blocks are a dream.  You don't need to wait until after you understand
to get it, they are very very simple to use and understand.

It is so easy, that it can be documented like this:
http://poignantguide.net/ruby/

> It's good for you that you're finding this easy, because other than the
> syntax, Ruby promotes a lot of good programming features. But if I had
> to bet in a business which language non-programmers are going to do
> better with, I'd go with the one where that was one of the design criteria.

I am not sure I totally understand your statement here.  Could you
explain please?

I think Ruby's syntax is one of its strong suits.  It doesn't lock you
into "someone else's" coding style, you can get in and get comfortable
and then travel at a 100mph to finish your program.

Which is easier?
for (hi = 100, lo = 0; hi >= lo; lo++)
or
(0..100).each

Probably really bad examples, but they both begin to do the same thing.

One other thing.  I am not sure why people bet their business on
current fads.  No computer language, except the C family, really is
going to be around long.  Java is suffering and there are millions of
people who have bet their career on this language.  Did you hear about
Sun pulling FreeBSD's license?  Isn't that scary to anyone else but
me?

You code in what you feel is the right thing to code in.  Paul Graham
has a lot of essays on this.
 
> I'm not a n00b programmer. Everything I see about Ruby on Rails puts it
> on the "it'll probably be good in a couple of years, but it's advocates
> need to work with it a few more years until they start hitting the
> problems that other environments have had to deal with with scalabity,
> project size, integrating with other environments, performance, etc.;
> everyone loves it now because none of the advocates have hit the wall
> yet." Zope was there a couple of years ago, and it seems to have passed
> through it and is now the core of *many* large projects; no longer do
> you always get pointed at the same large project, over and over again.
> Sadly, of course, this is largely after its hype bubble came and went,
> but that's the way it tends to go; it is *extremely rare* for hype and
> power to peak at the same time. (Note Java only really became a
> plausible choice about two years after the hype died down, for instance.)

One quick thingy about Zope.  What a PITA to install and get setup. 
The administration will use up most of the time these guys have and
will not allow a quick role out.  In all of my experiences with Zope
it has been a troublesome framework.

I am not sure how "Used by tens of thousands of people in over 40
countries!" is not going to produce the proverbial wall you speak of. 
Basecamp, again the largest project out there, is doing things that
most people don't do and at a scale that most people won't work at. 
Which reminds me, CD Baby just implemented Rails and PostgreSQL,
replacing their PHP/MySQL setup.
 
> That said, try it, learn, run through the tutorial, unless you push the
> boundaries it'll probably mature before you hit them either.
> 
> But then I'm not sure it's a good solution for the original poster
> anyhow; I'm pretty sure there's no form designers for Ruby on Rails and
> from what I've seen the framework is oriented against forms-based
> solutions, which I **strongly** approve of in general (building
> interfaces from metadata is the way to go and the framework seems built
> on that), but the requisite tradeoffs probably do not play in the
> original poster's favor.

Excuse my ignorance, but do you mean form designers as in html forms
(for example)?

I still don't think you've really presented what these tradeoffs are. 
Ruby is 2 years younger than Python, so it can't be age necessarily. 
Can you elaborate more.

Thank you for the fantastic discussion.

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