Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

Joe ...

DHH may be an outrageous, outspoken, obnoxious dude, but I don't see that
being relevant.  RoR does seem to be a powerful platform.  I abhor Bill
Gates' politics, but use his products.

 I thought the criticism was funny coming from you, given that you are
pretty outspoken yourself.  As an example, I point to the eloquent note in
support of Mr. Barsa which you wrote recently.

On 8/17/06, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If I'm not a professional programmer, there's a real good chance it would
be
better to buy a cheap data entry and analysis package.  Could you imagine
if
a research study on cancer went awry because a non-programmer cobbled
together something in Ruby and made a mistake?

The fault wouldn't lie with RoR (or Excel or MS Access or VB.NET) but rather
with the non-programmer getting in over his/her head, and the oversight of
that non-programmer.

How many of us have seen huge business decisions made based on data reported
in Excel, and wondered how the accountant who created the spreadsheet
verified the data and the formulas/macros in the spreadsheet?

This trend of designing programming tools to for non-programmers is a little

frightening if you examine it closely.  I mean, there's a REASON why you
can't just mix together your own potions and sell them as patent medicine.

So don't use it.  Doesn't your tool make it easier for a person not familiar
with (whatever) to develop systems that use (whatever)?  I am not sure I see
the difference?

Some businesses may use these platofrms, and accept the risk that goes along
with having applications developed by someone other than IT.

Caveat emptor!