Re: Ruby On Rails on the iSeries

Wow, Jerome.  You're turning out to be exactly the kind of person that this
person was talking about:

http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000382.html

Note that this is from someone who LOVES Ruby and Rails.  You're mad because
I'm not drinking the RoR koolaid, and because of that you start calling
names.  I have CONSISTENTLY said that I like RoR, and have just cautioned
that it isn't ready for prime time.  In my experience, the only person who
would dispute such a position would be a zealot.  Does that apply here?

I'm certainly not trying to bend the goals of RoR; I'm just making sure
nobody else does.  I'm making it clear to folks who don't have the time to
dig underneath the hype that RoR is NOT an enterprise-ready application
stack like J2EE or ILE as the zealots would have you believe.  And if you
say it is, then as Ricky would say to Lucy, "you got a lot of 'splainin' to
do".  Because even RoR proponents will tell you it is missing major pieces
that would qualify it as an enterprise stack.

As to the concept of "enterprise-level" being a term for "someone like me"
that's probably true, but only incidentally.  It so happens that I *AM* an
enterprise-level programmer by dint of some 30 years of experience.  Does
that make me a better programmer than a non-programmer?

Uh, yeah, it does, Jerome.  Gee, go figure.  In fact, just about everybody
on this list is a better programmer than a non-programmer.

I would think this is self-evident.  There is no tool that will give a
non-programmer the experience that the vast majority of people on this list
have.

Non-programmers can't code the intricacies of an MRP generation, or a
multi-leaved price lookup, or a finite forward scheduler.  They don't
understand Kerberos, or localization, or two-phased commits.  They don't
know what a race condition is, or serialization, or indeed just about
anything that is required to write real world applications.  All they can do
is depend on the tool, and RoR just ain't there, kiddo.

I've looked at the list of Ruby applications.  It's about what I'd expect
from a framework.  Some very nice but almost uniformly lightweight web-based
applications.  Shopping carts, e-zines, content management systems.  EXCEPT
for the user interface, few of them would tax the abilities of even a junior
RPG programmer.  Maybe the follow-me map application, I don't know.  But for
sure there isn't a single batch balancing application among them.

So as long as you understand that MY take on what an enterprise level system
is has little to do with how quickly I can knock out yet another "personal
information management system" and far more to do with integrated, flexible,
configurable applications that run businesses, then I say be my guest.  And
as soon as you get your first MRP generation written, let me know.

Joe

From: Jerome Hughes

Joe--

Starting to get the idea that the reason the idea of one slide with
two words on it upsets you so is that you're one of the people he was
addressing. Not meaning to put words in his mouth, but believe it was
those who are attempting to either...

a) bend the goals of _his_ framework to _their_ needs without taking
time to understand its goals

b) say that _his_ framework "is absolutely not yet ready for prime
time" when it really just isn't fitting their needs as they have them
defined, at "enterprise-level" which is typically really just code
for "the order of qualified individuals like me"

Personally find that candor refreshing and believe that it's one of
the reasons there's as much goodness there in so short a time.

If this sampling isn't evidence of prime time for web applications,
what would it take to convince you that it is?

      http://rubyonrails.org/applications