[EVALUATION] - E01: The Java Failure - May Ruby Helps?

[Stefan Schmiedl]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 04:57:08 +0900,

.... a very impressive 100-line who's who and what's what that I'll be
keeping for some time.

Thanks, Austin.

 

[Lyle Johnson]

.... a very impressive 100-line who's who and what's what that I'll be
keeping for some time.

I was thinking the same thing (and not just because my name was
mentioned). A really nice run-down of a lot of the Ruby-based
technologies out there. We should probably archive this on the Wiki,
no?

 

[craig duncan]

I was thinking the same thing (and not just because my name was
mentioned). A really nice run-down of a lot of the Ruby-based
technologies out there. We should probably archive this on the Wiki,
no?

I've seen the "maybe that should go on the wiki" response quite a few times. My
thought about that, though, is when i have problems, i do google searches. I've
found a lot of answers in ruby-talk but i've never found anything from the wiki.
There's probably a very obvious reason for that. But the point is that when someone
suggests putting something on the wiki, from my point of view (and that's all it is)
it's useless there. If an answer appears in ruby-talk, though, then its useful to
me. I find it. My problem is solved.

Anyone ever consider that angle of things? It's nice when you _do_ run across
material that's worth reading and you're interested enough in to read it, but i (and
many others, i would guess) tend to be problem driven, wanting to find the answer to
a specific problem. And in order to _find_ things that way, you google (or other)
search and whatever you come up with is pretty much the domain of what you have to
look through for answers.

?

 

[Lyle Johnson]

I've seen the "maybe that should go on the wiki" response quite a few times. My
thought about that, though, is when i have problems, i do google searches. I've
found a lot of answers in ruby-talk but i've never found anything from the wiki.
There's probably a very obvious reason for that.

I was going to explain my take on this, but by the time I got finished
reading your post it was pretty clear that you already know the
answer.

If I know what it is I'm looking for, and I'm just not sure where to
find it, I use Google. For the most part, Wikis are more useful (to
me) for accidentally stumbling across interesting things. For example,
I might visit a Wiki and see that article X has been updated recently,
so I scan it just to see what it's about. That article links to
article Y on the same Wiki, and so I follow the link, and sometimes
serendipity kicks in and I find something interesting.

 

[Robert Klemme]

I was going to explain my take on this, but by the time I got finished
reading your post it was pretty clear that you already know the
answer.

If I know what it is I'm looking for, and I'm just not sure where to
find it, I use Google. For the most part, Wikis are more useful (to
me) for accidentally stumbling across interesting things. For example,
I might visit a Wiki and see that article X has been updated recently,
so I scan it just to see what it's about. That article links to
article Y on the same Wiki, and so I follow the link, and sometimes
serendipity kicks in and I find something interesting.

Sounds like an implementation of ManualBot... )

robert

 

[craig duncan]

Sounds like an implementation of ManualBot... )

robert

So, i guess the joke implies that there is no "known" way to make the valuable info
collected on a wiki available for searching?

My obvious and total ignorance may be showing because i've never (that i recall)
visited the wiki site... ever. The (however good or bad) reason being that it never
came up in a google search. I should go and browse some, i suppose... when i find
the time. Maybe it has a search feature that i should remember to include in my
repetoire of searching behaviors when i go looking for information relating to the
specific thing i'm working on. ?

 

[Robert Klemme]

So, i guess the joke implies that there is no "known" way to make the valuable info
collected on a wiki available for searching?

That's not what I indended to convey. It was just a joke on Lyle's
crawling style. Basically this is the style that most humans follow, I
guess.

My obvious and total ignorance may be showing because i've never (that i recall)
visited the wiki site... ever. The (however good or bad) reason being that it never
came up in a google search. I should go and browse some, i suppose... when i find
the time. Maybe it has a search feature that i should remember to include in my
repetoire of searching behaviors when i go looking for information relating to the
specific thing i'm working on. ?

I think usually you can search a wiki although some seem to try to hide
the search dialogue...

robots.txt could be a reason for not being indexed.

Kind regards

robert

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Austin Ziegler wrote:
[...]

[simple] how can I create objects.
[simple] how can I make them persistent.
[simple] how can I create a generic GU
[simple] how can I create a generic Web GUI
[simple] how can I update the object model ....

[...]
What do you mean by this? If you simply want to create a class and
then instances of the class, it's very simply:

class Foo
... # define your attributes and methods here[1]
end

x = Foo.new

[...]

-

I simply need to produce software.

You have described many systems.

Java has hundreds, possibly thousands of it.

But you cannot produce software with those technologies, when you have
the requirement "OOAD", "scalable", "embeddable", and some others that
i've described (which essentially are nothing special).

-

Isn't there any _bundle_ of those Ruby technologies that you listed,
which are verified, which allow a simple software production, without
the need of research & plumbing?

Just Download & start?

..

 

[Thomas E Enebo]

I simply need to produce software.

You have described many systems.

Java has hundreds, possibly thousands of it.

But you cannot produce software with those technologies, when you have
the requirement "OOAD", "scalable", "embeddable", and some others that
i've described (which essentially are nothing special).

-

Isn't there any _bundle_ of those Ruby technologies that you listed,
which are verified, which allow a simple software production, without
the need of research & plumbing?

Just Download & start?

What Java bundles exist where you just download and start? Especially
that does a fraction of what you are talking about. Many frameworks and
tools exist in Java, but they all require research and I cannot think
of a single-stop solution. Enterprise highly scalable stuff exists for
java, but that stuff is never really simple software production. It also
always seems to need plenty of plumbing.

Your requirements seem more like an outline for a corporate white
paper than a real-world use case for software development. At least
with the amount of detail you have. Perhaps you could revise your
research a little to collate and organize a list of ruby software that
could be combined into a "dream" system (people have been trying to help you
fill out such a list)? Maybe provide more concrete considerations why some
of the technologies fall short?

-Tom

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

clarification: i wrote "cannot"

What Java bundles exist where you just download and start? Especially
that does a fraction of what you are talking about. Many frameworks and
tools exist in Java, but they all require research and I cannot think
of a single-stop solution. Enterprise highly scalable stuff exists for
java, but that stuff is never really simple software production. It also
always seems to need plenty of plumbing.

One reason for leaving JAVA.

Your requirements seem more like an outline for a corporate white
paper than a real-world use case for software development. At least
with the amount of detail you have.

This is an evaluation template with standard requirements (they are
really nothing special, if you read them).

Perhaps you could revise your
research a little to collate and organize a list of ruby software that
could be combined into a "dream" system (people have been trying to help you
fill out such a list)?

I've not the domain knowledge to do so.

The ruby community has the domain-knowledge to fill it in.

As stated at the begin of this thread:

this is a simple cooperation.

Maybe provide more concrete considerations why some
of the technologies fall short?

sounds good.

-Tom

..

 

[Austin Ziegler]

Austin Ziegler wrote:
[...]

[simple] how can I create objects.
[simple] how can I make them persistent.
[simple] how can I create a generic GU
[simple] how can I create a generic Web GUI
[simple] how can I update the object model ....

[...]
What do you mean by this? If you simply want to create a class
and then instances of the class, it's very simply:

class Foo
... # define your attributes and methods here[1]
end

x = Foo.new

[...]
I simply need to produce software.

Right. But the production of software is something that is very
dependent upon the problem space you are trying to use it in.

You have described many systems.

Java has hundreds, possibly thousands of it.

But you cannot produce software with those technologies, when you
have the requirement "OOAD", "scalable", "embeddable", and some
others that i've described (which essentially are nothing
special).

Right. There are two words which you have that are (by and large)
contradictory: scalable and embeddable. Not only that, by
themselves, these words have NO MEANING WHATSOEVER. If I have an
application that works well if one person or 100 people are using
it, then it's scalable. Or do you mean 10,000 people simultaneously?
There are different levels of scalability and different meanings. Do
you want it to be parallel scalability (e.g., thousands of
simultaneous users) or data scalability (e.g., terabytes of data) or
something else entirely?

Embeddable technologies, moreover, are known for their small
footprint, which doesn't often turn into massive scalability.

Rails is a highly scalable application framework. Nitro appears to
be a highly scalable application framework. They're both
web-oriented, which makes them very hard to use with non-web user
interfaces. They're both database oriented, which makes them hard to
use with non-database persistence. Rails performs very badly under
some conditions (CGI environments), but performs as well or better
than very expensive Java application frameworks when configured
properly (FCGI environments, others).

Isn't there any _bundle_ of those Ruby technologies that you
listed, which are verified, which allow a simple software
production, without the need of research & plumbing?

No. Then again, there's no such thing for Java, Python, C++, C,
Delphi, or anything else, either. Smart software designers design
their software to the problem space and then generalise from there,
if they can.

There is no software out there which you can simply wire together
into an application. You have to actually pick and choose based on
the needs of your current project.

-austin

 

[Thomas E Enebo]

One reason for leaving JAVA.

Fair enough. As a follow up question...Have you found any technology
suite that has fullfilled your requirements list?

-Tom

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Fair enough. As a follow up question...Have you found any technology
suite that has fullfilled your requirements list?

not yet.

I'm evaluating some python stuff, but the reaction of the community on a
simple questionaire has distracted me very mouch.

[EVALUATION] - E02 - Support for MinGW Open Source Compiler
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/f5cd74aa26617f17

-

If i find e.g. 70% fo my requirements fulfilled within ruby, I would
possibly start to implement the remaining 30%.

But possibly I should split my requirements down into smaller chunks,
and ask step by step.

-Tom

..

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Austin Ziegler wrote: [...]

[simple] how can I create objects. [simple] how can I make them
persistent. [simple] how can I create a generic GU [simple] how
can I create a generic Web GUI [simple] how can I update the
object model .... [...]

What do you mean by this? If you simply want to create a class
and then instances of the class, it's very simply:

class Foo ... # define your attributes and methods here[1] end

x = Foo.new

[...] I simply need to produce software.

Right. But the production of software is something that is very
dependent upon the problem space you are trying to use it in.

of course.

I've defined my needs in the presented document (essentially a form of
Model Driven Architecture (MDA)).

You have described many systems.

Java has hundreds, possibly thousands of it.

But you cannot produce software with those technologies, when you
have the requirement "OOAD", "scalable", "embeddable", and some
others that i've described (which essentially are nothing special).

Right. There are two words which you have that are (by and large)
contradictory: scalable and embeddable.[...]

It is not contradictory.

i'm asking that the design can be transformed:

"
# Initial design runs on local client.
# Ability to transform design to run on higher grade systems

* High Load Systems (load balancing, clustering )
* large scale OODBMS

# Ability to transform design to run on embedded devices.
"

Rails is a highly scalable application framework.
ok

Nitro appears to be a highly scalable application framework.
ok

They're both web-oriented, which makes them very hard to use with
non-web user interfaces.

ok.

This would mean: "requirements met, except local GUI"

They're both database oriented, which makes them hard to use with
non-database persistence.

rembember:

I can contribute.

If not existent, I could e.g. write an persistency abstraction for the
mentioned frameworks, thus others can plug-in persistence drivers.

Rails performs very badly under some
conditions (CGI environments), but performs as well or better than
very expensive Java application frameworks when configured properly
(FCGI environments, others).
ok


No. Then again, there's no such thing for Java, Python, C++, C,
Delphi, or anything else, either.

This is false.

Commercial systems exist, mostly very expensive.

-

No such thing exist with the requirement "open-source".

I'm still wondering: which will be the first open-source-language
community which will realizes this and bundles this package, at least
with a partly grade.

Smart software designers design
their software to the problem space and then generalise from there,
if they can.

I think you are over-generalising.

Personally, I prefere to use case-tools.

The problem is, that open-source fails to produce them:

http://lazaridis.com/core/product/case.html

There is no software out there which you can simply wire together
into an application. You have to actually pick and choose based on
the needs of your current project.

Even if it is this way:

Pick & pack should be simpler.

-austin

..

 

[Wes Moxam]

[snip]

This guy has been asking these sorts of questions on various
comp.lang.* lists. He's been banned from several. I hate to be an ass,
but I really think this thread is a waste of time.

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=Ilias+Lazaridis&start=40&

-- Wes

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

[snip]

This guy has been asking these sorts of questions on various
comp.lang.* lists. He's been banned from several. I hate to be an ass,
but I really think this thread is a waste of time.

Mr. Moxam,

is it possible that i've invested all this time to do this research and
to write everything down on my website, just for having some fun on some
forums?

http://lazaridis.com/core/index.html

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=Ilias+Lazaridis&start=40&

You do not inform anyone about something new.

Simply review my original message, where I point to 3 communities which
have censored me.

I ask you friendly to avoid further off-topic posts.

-- Wes

..

 

[Austin Ziegler]

of course.

I've defined my needs in the presented document (essentially a
form of Model Driven Architecture (MDA)).

Then very few languages will do what you want, and they pretty much
are brought to you by the letters M, S, and B.

You have described many systems.

Right. There are two words which you have that are (by and large)
contradictory: scalable and embeddable.[...]

It is not contradictory.

We could go on like this, but emphatically, with a LOT of SE
experience behind me, they are contradictory. Embeddable databases
don't scale well, and to wring performance out of them, they often
end up using features that don't correspond to larger database
engines. Examples? SQLite -- a really good embeddable RDBMS --
doesn't implement the full SQL language (I think it might support
most SQL89, but not SQL92, but I don't recall). MySQL explicitly
*breaks* significant portions of SQL compatibility.

Reality number one: the so-called portable SQL database application,
isn't. If your SQL database application is portable, it uses the LCD
of database features or has separate ORDBMS layers implementing the
various features that are present in one database but not another.

And *that's* just if you're talking about embeddable databases. If
you need to do embedded systems programming, you're in even more
trouble, because most

[...]

This is false.

Commercial systems exist, mostly very expensive.

Actually, Ilias, it is 100% accurate. There is no system in
existence -- no CASE tool in existence -- which will allow you to:
1) generate any random application in the world that can use an
embedded database or an external database and perform well in any
use case; and
2) program against platform-agnostic GUI to run on systems from Sun
to Linux to Windows to MacOS X to PalmOS or even something
embedded in your toaster, OR run as a web application at whim.

That's basically what you're wanting. There's no such commercial
application and there's no such open source application. Why?
Because such a tool would SUCK. As every single CASE tool in
existence has ever done. CASE tools generally require that you run a
very large runtime, program *their* way, often in *their* language
(which isn't related to anyone else's), and then tend to fall behind
both operating system releases and the technology curve.

-austin

 

[Dick Davies]

[snip]

This guy has been asking these sorts of questions on various
comp.lang.* lists. He's been banned from several. I hate to be an ass,
but I really think this thread is a waste of time.

Mr. Moxam,

is it possible that i've invested all this time to do this research and
to write everything down on my website, just for having some fun on some
forums?

Yes, yes it is.

You've got an awful lot of detailed information from some very helpful and
patient people, so maybe it's time to actually try the language now?

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

[snip]
This guy has been asking these sorts of questions on various
comp.lang.* lists. He's been banned from several. I hate to be an ass,
but I really think this thread is a waste of time.

Mr. Moxam,

is it possible that i've invested all this time to do this research and
to write everything down on my website, just for having some fun on some
forums?

Yes, yes it is.

You've got an awful lot of detailed information from some very helpful and
patient people, so maybe it's time to actually try the language now?

no, it not the time.

Please avoid further off-topic replies.

..

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Austin Ziegler wrote:
[...] - (increased complexity, lost context)

I'm sorry, I cannot continue the discussion.

-

I just ask the community to point at least to an clear overview of the
building-blocks which I can use within ruby.

As stated in another message:

"
If i find e.g. 70% fo my requirements fulfilled within ruby, I would
possibly start to implement the remaining 30%.

But possibly I should split my requirements down into smaller chunks,
and ask step by step.
"

-

So, most possibly I have to go this way.

Asking step by step.

..