Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

Jerome, I just want to be sure my position is clear on this:

1. I like Ruby.  As far as I can tell, it's a pretty well designed example
of a dynamically typed language: closer to Smalltalk (which I liked, BTW)
than most other languages.

2. I like Rails.  It's a good implementation of what it tries to do: make
programming easy by relying on convention.

My problems are this: neither one of these things (dynamically typed
scripting languages or programming by convention) are proven to actually
work in enterprise level projects, whereas other environments (RPG, J2EE,
even VB/ASP) have proven track records.  So to talk about Ruby or RoR as a
technology that is going to supplant others is, to my mind, just a little
irresponsible.

And me personally, I have no use for yet another tool to do quick an dirty
programming, no matter how easy it is.  Unless it is proven to work in an
enterprise environment it's not something I'm going to use much.  And even
then, if the people behind the project are just as important as the
technology itself.

I only have to point to the vast number of Struts applications that are now
behind the technology curve to indicate how an open source technology, no
matter how well received by the community, can just as quickly wither and
die when there is a schism among the developers and someone influential
jumps ship.

Joe

From: Jerome Hughes

Joe--

(wrote this last night, but held off sending it... also not looking
for a debate, but perhaps can present another view, my friend...)