smarkham01
6/20/2006 9:55:00 PM
Your bosses objections are well founded and difficult to overcome. As
a boss, I, too, have faced these problems and overcome them on more
than one occasion. On the other hand, I've left things status quo a
number of times, too.
1. What happens when you leave the firm? Regardless of the language
used, the loss of a programmer is never pleasant. Are the languages
you using now any easier to hire instant experts on than Ruby? Who in
the world do you call when your C programmer leaves? Microsoft?
Borland? If you're using ksh sh or csh on your name brand Unix box,
does the brand holder respond to shell programming questions?
Languages come and go, if the lack of commercial support (this probably
includes the lack of training classes as well as the inability to hire
qualified programmers off the street) is being raised, it usually can't
be overcome.
2. Rounding errors - Yep, they happen. As long as you folks keep
using these new fangled computers, you'll have rounding errors. MS has
them, MicroFocus might have a BED (Binary Encoded Decimal) library that
helps keep their rounding errors in check. You either learn to code to
the errors or you buy or write a library for production use. Your boss
may need to see the rounding errors in MS products to understand, hell
I can come as close to correct as most MS product computations using a
slide rule.
Bottom line, continuity sometimes has to take precedence over new and
exciting. Even when new and exciting is clearly better.
>dave wrote:
> 1.) on going formal support if i should leave the firm...ie...he
> doesn't like open source things because there are no 1-800 support
> numbers or formal vendor support forums....his words not mine.....
> 2.)....i want the ruby expert to comment on this....my objection....
> dollars and cents rounding error.....
>
> ....otherwise, what kind of concurrent record locking does the
> ActiveRecord in RoR do????....dave....
> elriba wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I've developed an ERP system (accounting, inventory, payroll,
> > invoicing, etc...) for the company I work for using a compiled
> > language. It works fine, but compiling all those DLLs and EXEs does
> > take a long time, and as the application grows, it has become a pain to
> > mantain. The ERP system uses some 500 tables on an ODBC SQL database.
> >
> > Could Ruby be used to develop such a system? Has it been used? Or
> > would I be pushing the limit of what Ruby can do?
> >
> > Thanks in advance!