Why Ruby?

[Phlip]

I have never seen or heard of Ruby in a corporate context. The single
exception (where I first came across it) was a supplier who was using it
with Watir for testing a Java application.

The shame they could not test Java with Java is overwhelming.

Obese platforms like Java are invented to sell to corporate managers.

If you supply services to corporates, what sort of case can you make for
using Ruby rather than Java, which is in use everywhere? (I'm not
thinking of Rails here, which is a rather specialized).

The main selling point is: Getting twice the features written, in half the time,
with 1/10th the lines of code, and with no bugs (under Test Driven Development).

Yes, Java supports TDD, but Ruby is a dynamic language. That makes everything
easier, including the testing.

In Java, you must declare the class hierarchy for every interface, and you must
declare which types are allowed in what variables. This overhead is remarkably
similar to the (Taylorist) principle that to do anything in a big company you
must first fill out your paperwork, in triplicate, get it approved by your
managers' managers' managers, bury it in peat for a decade, etc. Java is an
example of "overcontrol", yet that is exactly the selling point that Sun makes
to your managers.

 

[Mike Stephens]

Thanks Phlip.

If I add all the responses together I think we get Ruby can be
positioned for agile rapid applications, prototyping etc. Java is
typically more long-winded but suitable for big expensive structured
mainstream projects requiring all the bureacratic strategic
architectures and policies.

 

[Larz]

Il giorno 30/dic/08, alle ore 19:44, Robert Dober ha scritto:


Ah, too bad, that's a citation from "Il pendolo di Focault", probably
his masterpiece.There's a part where the main character cracks an
account (on a word processor that one of the characters named
Abulafia, like the jewish philosopher of the mistic qabbalah) using
social engineering.
Try it if you have a chance.

ngw

p.s. sorry for the OT

--http://www.nofeed.org

How did abulafia end up in the Ruby thread ? I read all kinds of
kabbalah books myself for many years, but the last few years I have
been pretty heavily influenced by Parmahansa Yogananda ..

 

[Peter Booth]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Of course ten years ago Mike could easily have been asking:

I have never seen or heard of Java in a corporate context. The single
exception (where I first came across it) was a supplier using a Java
applet
to animate text on his world wide web page.

If you supply services to corporates, what sort of case can you make
for
using Java rather than C++, which is in use everywhere? (I'm not
thinking of applets here, which is a rat

The point being that the same patterns of behavior will recur.
So soon enough BigWig A will be playing gold with BigWig B
and will say,
"You know we've got some great cost savings with
our push to Agile, especially the whole Ruby on Rails things,
what about you?
"Us, we're looking at at it, not sure what results yet."

Next Morning
"Smith, What are doing with Ruby on Rails?"
"er um, dont know"
"Well I don't want to miss the boat on this thing, make sure we're
taking it seriously, lets raise it at the next development managers
meeting ..."

I can recall how hard it was to get people to take Java seriously.
I can also remember hearing "C++ is very pretty but it will never
replace Fortran"
And also, "You're trying to do that in GW-Basic. Are you crazy?
Everyone knows that you can only do FFTs in Assembler. It will never
be fast enough on an interpreter!"

 

[Rob Biedenharn]

The point being that the same patterns of behavior will recur.
So soon enough BigWig A will be playing gold with BigWig B
and will say,

I guess you HAVE to be a BigWig to play "gold" ;-)

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn http://agileconsultingllc.com
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Robert Dober]

Thanks Phlip.

If I add all the responses together I think we get Ruby can be
positioned for agile rapid applications, prototyping etc. Java is
typically more long-winded but suitable for big expensive structured
mainstream projects requiring all the bureacratic strategic
architectures and policies.

Why would Ruby misfit large structured projects (whatever mainstream
is, probably that part of the water racing fastest towards the falls)
as long TDD/BDD is applicable?

Cheers
Robert

 

[James Herdman]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I use Ruby daily at my place of employ. The company I work for is a
multi-billion dollar outfit. I'm not sure if I can name the name though.

The caveat to this is that my team is a very small component of this
company. That's changing quickly though.

James

 

[Todd Benson]

I didn't copy thread material, because my thought is not directed at
any one conversation, but I thought it would be appropriate to say
something in this thread.

Is it plausible people are using Agile development because modern day
consumer-type software has a half-life of about, umm, 3 hours? After
that, it has to be mended and/or replaced. In fact, the whole
paradigm in Ruby seems to be based on this premise.

I love the language, and will never stop using it, but Agile
development sounds very much like snake oil.

2c.

Todd

 

[Dan]

Hi everyone. I'm new to Ruby and have a question that I hope is
simple. I wanted to compare some strings for similarity, and found
this ruby gem called "english" (http://english.rubyforge.org/) which
has a method called "similarity" that gives me back a similarity score
when used. I wanted to know how that score is being calculated - and
I looked through the docs and couldn't find it.

I'm wondering if there's a way to easily "see" the code for a
particular method from a gem - can i somehow use irb to show me the
code for "similarity" to see how it is coming up with that score?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a silly newbie question.

 

[Jakub Pavlík jn.]

Hi everyone. I'm new to Ruby and have a question that I hope is

simple. I wanted to compare some strings for similarity, and found
this ruby gem called "english" (http://english.rubyforge.org/) which
has a method called "similarity" that gives me back a similarity score
when used. I wanted to know how that score is being calculated - and
I looked through the docs and couldn't find it.

I'm wondering if there's a way to easily "see" the code for a
particular method from a gem - can i somehow use irb to show me the
code for "similarity" to see how it is coming up with that score?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a silly newbie question.

Type

gem unpack english

It will unpack the gem into cwd and you can search the code.

 

[Michael Guterl]

Hi everyone. I'm new to Ruby and have a question that I hope is simple. I
wanted to compare some strings for similarity, and found this ruby gem
called "english" (http://english.rubyforge.org/) which has a method called
"similarity" that gives me back a similarity score when used. I wanted to
know how that score is being calculated - and I looked through the docs and
couldn't find it.

I'm wondering if there's a way to easily "see" the code for a particular
method from a gem - can i somehow use irb to show me the code for
"similarity" to see how it is coming up with that score?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a silly newbie question.

http://gemedit.rubyforge.org/

 

[Mike Stephens]

Why would Ruby misfit large structured projects?

I didn't mean to imply Java is stodgy and Ruby is fluid. It was just
that currently Java and C# are the corporate OO standards, so people
will always want to know why you're not using one of those. You thus
have to use some spin; create some clear blue water. Rails is certainly
one way of getting around the Architecture Standards Manual but I guess
they'll soon be a Java version if there isn't one already.

 

[Robert Dober]

I didn't mean to imply Java is stodgy and Ruby is fluid. It was just
that currently Java and C# are the corporate OO standards, so people
will always want to know why you're not using one of those. You thus
have to use some spin; create some clear blue water. Rails is certainly
one way of getting around the Architecture Standards Manual but I guess
they'll soon be a Java version if there isn't one already.

Sorry Mike I must be on a different planet
Do we agree that Ruby is fit for large projects?
I on my side agree completely with what you say here, I probably
misunderstood something earlier on.
Cheers
Robert

 

[Phlip]

Do we agree that Ruby is fit for large projects?

Someone famous - I suspect Abraham Lincoln - once said "If I had an hour to chop
down a tree, I would spend 30 minutes sharpening my ax." Or similar numbers.

Some pointy-haired bosses out there don't understand that metaphor. They think
that the more strokes needed to chop down the tree, the more "progress" we made.

That's why stodgy languages that lead to huge line counts are very easy to
market to them.

 

[Robert Dober]

Someone famous - I suspect Abraham Lincoln - once said "If I had an hour to
chop down a tree, I would spend 30 minutes sharpening my ax." Or similar
numbers.

Some pointy-haired bosses out there don't understand that metaphor. They
think that the more strokes needed to chop down the tree, the more
"progress" we made.

That's why stodgy languages that lead to huge line counts are very easy to
market to them.

Sure, but in the end all that counts will be the trees chopped down,
right . Just to give myself some hope LOL.
And sorry for that terrible metaphor we do not want to kill any trees
down of course !!!
R.