«

I would say Ruby is a viable corporate alternative. It has cut down my
development time by a factor of ten, for web services and web apps
(using Rails). I would not like to touch Java again.

Your Java/C++ cadre are probably the late adopters who said the same
thing about Java when it came out. I would try to not let them hold me
back ... Java's 'strong' point now I would say is in web apps, that's
where I seem to see it being used most AFAICT.

Linux Journal just gave their Editor's Choice (from another thread on
this list) to Rails for web app framework and to Ruby for language.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9368

I think the trick is to get into stuff early but not *too* early - and
to ignore the laggards since they will always be there, any way. If
they want to write huge amounts of code, that's fine with me, but
hopefully they are on their own team and can slog as much as they want
while wiser people save time and finish early.

-- G.

On 11/28/06, Mr P <> wrote:
> Our team uses Perl for almost 100% of our projects, as we have for the
> past 10 year or so. At that point we broke from the C/C++ herd and
> never looked back. Our productivity has been the best in the
> corporation since, and we hear nothing but complaints and bad-mouthing
> from the Java/C++ cadre since their design and implementations are
> typically 5-10X what ours are..
>
> Anyhow- as the team director, I'm always *looking ahead*. Although Perl
> is still serving us well, I'm thinking for the benefit of our
> developers ( to get more languages in their personal toolkit ) as well
> as making productivity improvements through OO design and the ruby
> environment, I'm starting to talk up and promote Ruby as the NEXT
> language.
>
> This REALLY set off a firestorm from the Java folks, They are already
> they are trying to undermine us with comments like:
>
> o you'll never find any developers to support it, there are almost none
> in the USA
>
> o you won't like anything that comes out of Japan (this comment from a
> country that was conquered by Japan and still harbors a lot of
> resentment, so I sort of discounted that comment! )
>
> o its not gaining popularity and will probably die out
>
> o might as well just use Java
>
> ... and so on..
>
> Anyhow, if you all can provide me with websites on Ruby stats vis-a-vis
> other languages, trends, successes, etc., I'd like to go into this
> battle armed! The break from the herd 10 years ago was very
> productive, and my impression is that Ruby would have similar results.
>
>
>

pat eyler wrote:
> On 11/28/06, Li Chen <> wrote:
> >
> > > NYC.rb has a regular monthly attendance of over 40 and is working
> > > to put together a regional conference in the Spring.
> > > There are active Ruby groups in Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, New Haven,
> > > Boston, San Diego, Missoula, Boise, St. Louise, Portland, Minneapolis,
> > > Columbus,
> >
> > What is the name for the one in Columbus?
>
> the columbus.rb
> http://www.columbusrb.com/
>
>
>
> >
> > Li
> >
> > --
> > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> thanks,
> -pate
> -------------------------
> http://on-ruby.blogspot.com

Interesting. I live in Columbus, Ohio and didn't realize there was a
Ruby user's group here. I should try to find the time and make one of
the meetings. I've been using Ruby for 2 years now for The Diamond
Cellar (http://www.diamondcellar.com) and have had the chance to build
a couple of in-house GUI apps (a mobile CRM app and an employee survey
app), a Rails order management system, and lots of admin scripts. I'd
be interested in hearing how other folks leverage Ruby...

Hi --

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, gregarican wrote:

>
> pat eyler wrote:
>> On 11/28/06, Li Chen <> wrote:
>>>
>>>> NYC.rb has a regular monthly attendance of over 40 and is working
>>>> to put together a regional conference in the Spring.
>>>> There are active Ruby groups in Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, New Haven,
>>>> Boston, San Diego, Missoula, Boise, St. Louise, Portland, Minneapolis,
>>>> Columbus,
>>>
>>> What is the name for the one in Columbus?
>>
>> the columbus.rb
>> http://www.columbusrb.com/
>
> Interesting. I live in Columbus, Ohio and didn't realize there was a
> Ruby user's group here.

Not only that; you've also got a conference coming up:
http://erubycon.com/


David

--
David A. Black |
Author of "Ruby for Rails" [1] | Ruby/Rails training & consultancy [3]
DABlog (DAB's Weblog) [2] | Co-director, Ruby Central, Inc. [4]
[1] http://www.manning.com/black | [3] http://www.rubypowerandlight.com
[2] http://dablog.rubypal.com | [4] http://www.rubycentral.org

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:17:40 -0800, Mr P wrote:

> Our team uses Perl for almost 100% of our projects, as we have for the
> past 10 year or so. At that point we broke from the C/C++ herd and
> never looked back. Our productivity has been the best in the
> corporation since, and we hear nothing but complaints and bad-mouthing
> from the Java/C++ cadre since their design and implementations are
> typically 5-10X what ours are..
>
> Anyhow- as the team director, I'm always *looking ahead*. Although Perl
> is still serving us well, I'm thinking for the benefit of our
> developers ( to get more languages in their personal toolkit ) as well
> as making productivity improvements through OO design and the ruby
> environment, I'm starting to talk up and promote Ruby as the NEXT
> language.
>
> This REALLY set off a firestorm from the Java folks, They are already
> they are trying to undermine us with comments like:
>
> o you'll never find any developers to support it, there are almost none
> in the USA
>
> o you won't like anything that comes out of Japan (this comment from a
> country that was conquered by Japan and still harbors a lot of
> resentment, so I sort of discounted that comment! )
>
> o its not gaining popularity and will probably die out

I can't really answer any of these specific concerns, but I can say that I
think Java is a pain in the butt to program, owing to various kinds of
inconsistent semantics (e.g. the dichotomy between arrays and
Collections). C++, as much as everyone thinks it's a worse
language, is nonetheless easier to program, and I absolutely love
Ruby.

--Ken

--
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:17:40 -0800, Mr P wrote:

> Our team uses Perl for almost 100% of our projects, as we have for the
> past 10 year or so. At that point we broke from the C/C++ herd and
> never looked back. Our productivity has been the best in the
> corporation since, and we hear nothing but complaints and bad-mouthing
> from the Java/C++ cadre since their design and implementations are
> typically 5-10X what ours are..

Consider yourself warned that Ruby doesn't have any native compiler (like
perlcc for perl) or bytecode compiler, so if you're releasing your code
to the world, you have no practical way to protect your investment (yet).

--Ken

--
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/

> This REALLY set off a firestorm from the Java folks, They are already
> they are trying to undermine us with comments like:


> o might as well just use Java
>
> ... and so on..
>
> Anyhow, if you all can provide me with websites on Ruby stats vis-a-
> vis
> other languages, trends, successes, etc., I'd like to go into this
> battle armed! The break from the herd 10 years ago was very
> productive, and my impression is that Ruby would have similar results.

Some anecdotal evidence: as of RailsConf 2006, 65% of the 20 No Fluff
Just Stuff speakers (Java gurus) were making their living from Ruby
on Rails instead. Some names that your Java colleagues may recognise
(apologies to anyone who feels left out are:

- Dave Thomas (Pragmatic Programmers)
- James Duncan Davidson (Ant, Tomcat, Servlet API)
- Mike Clark (testing enthusiast)
- Tom Copeland (PMD)

Regards,
Andy Stewart

I am not sure what you mean by *corporate* alternative, that term in
my mind suggests internal applications to an enterprise.

One area that Ruby is going to have trouble with is on Windows. Ruby is a great
experience on Unix & Mac environments, but it can get pretty clunky on windows.
For GUI-based applications you can have some byzantine install procedures
(the GUI admin client installation for SQLite takes the ****).

Rails on Linux massively outperforms Rails on Windows, thats probably not a huge
deal, but the support ecology is biased towards Unix environments - don't expect
the plugins and libraries to always have windows equivalents or the
windows equivalents
may be less mature or less well tested (not enough eyes). Often you simply have
less options as a developer when you are shipping on a windows platform (like
no Capistrano).

Ruby is a great language but if windows development is of primary
interest to you,
you will have to curtail your ambitions or research the problem thoroughly.

Quoting Richard Conroy <>:

> Ruby is a great language but if windows development is of primary interest to
you, >you will have to curtail your ambitions or research the problem
thoroughly.

This has been my experience as well. Windows support is improving, but it's not
as good as some other open source/free scripting languages (Python and Perl).
Having said that, you can still do a lot with Ruby on Windows (especially
systems stuff). I wrote this in Ruby on Windows, it's not a very good example,
but it's very Windows specific:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/rtilley/...g/svc_tag.html

When I have to muck around with security descriptors or other more complex
windows specific stuff, I general use Python when Ruby cannot do the task as
easily.

Just my 2 cents,

Brad

Brad Tilley wrote:
> Quoting Richard Conroy <>:
>
>
>> Ruby is a great language but if windows development is of primary interest to
>>
> you, >you will have to curtail your ambitions or research the problem
> thoroughly.
>
> This has been my experience as well. Windows support is improving, but it's not
> as good as some other open source/free scripting languages (Python and Perl).
>
Are you referring to ActiveState when you mean "Windows support?"

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.

Quoting "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <>:

> Are you referring to ActiveState when you mean "Windows support?"

No. Things like Mark Hammonds win32 packages for Python that add a huge amount
of Windows specific functionality: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

I think Daniel Berger and some others are working on a lot of win32 specific
stuff for Ruby that may one day be comparable to that:
http://rubyforge.org/projects/win32utils/

Also, simple things like having an MSI based installer for large scale
installations (install across an entire domain for example).