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comp.lang.ruby

Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming

Dido Sevilla

9/1/2006 11:30:00 AM

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/...

Actually, despite the fact that I love Ruby a lot, I'm inclined to
partially agree with him on this. Presently, our company does have
some Rails-based web applications deployed but they're predominantly
applications geared for use by only a few people (internal client use
only); we've not yet tried to deploy a real public-facing web
application based on Rails. For that, it works really well. We're
taking a wait and see attitude before we attempt to use Rails for any
high load applications; my own experiences attempting to optimize
plain Ruby code for performance have been simultaneously frustrating
and rewarding. I doubt I could do the same with a Rails app. So for
now we're gonna stick with PHP for our public facing web applications,
even if it is even worse for i18n/l10n/m17n applications than Ruby
is...
139 Answers

Yukihiro Matsumoto

9/1/2006 1:00:00 PM

0

Hi,

In message "Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming"
on Fri, 1 Sep 2006 20:30:02 +0900, "Dido Sevilla" <dido.sevilla@gmail.com> writes:

|http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/...

I am very proud he mentioned Ruby in one of his essays. Actually, I
agree with his conclusion:

>that's not a safe choice for at least another year or six. that's not
>a safe choice for at least another year or six.

He is a businessman, not a geek, so he does not have to risk himself
using Ruby (and Rails). It doesn't matter. He will not pay me
anything even if he choose Ruby.

But we disagree in the middle.

> (1) it displays a stunning antipathy towards Unicode and
> (2) it's known to be slow, so if you become The Next MySpace, you'll
> be buying 5 times as many boxes as the .NET guy down the hall.

(1) Although we took different path to handle m17n issue from other
Unicode centric languages, we don't have any "stunning antipathy".
(2) Although Ruby runs slower than other languages in those
micro-benchmarks, real bottleneck in the most application lies in
either network connection or databases. So we don't have to buy 5
times as many boxes.

matz.

Richard Conroy

9/1/2006 1:15:00 PM

0

On 9/1/06, Dido Sevilla <dido.sevilla@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/...
>
> Actually, despite the fact that I love Ruby a lot, I'm inclined to
> partially agree with him on this.

He is a good writer, and I really like how he cuts through the
rhetoric and is firmly grounded on practical programming matters.

His core point on technology choice is valid:
"How do you decide between C#, Java, PHP, and Python? The only real
difference is which one you know better. If you have a serious Java
guru on your team who has build several large systems successfully
with Java, you're going to be a hell of a lot more successful with
Java than with C#, not because Java is a better language (it's not,
but the differences are too minor to matter) but because he knows it
better. Etc."

His point is valid too if you have a big Rails guru on your team, someone who
has built large successful Rails systems, then you pick a Rails solution.

The performance/scalability of Rails as an enterprise web-fronted system is
continually questioned. People point to Basecamp etc. as examples that Rails can
do it.

But thats missing the point - those systems are successful becuase those
companies have very good, experienced Rails engineers. Rails n00bs would
probably make a lot of mistakes that clash with the framework and
compromise its scalability.

He also has a point about his wait-and-see attitude wrt Rails. Rails development
is moving quickly, and in a year's time the major issues like unicode support,
deployment, support ecosystem (tools, etc.) and performance could be
solved problems.

Derek Chesterfield

9/1/2006 1:41:00 PM

0

On 1 Sep 2006, at 14:00, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

> Actually, I agree with his conclusion:
>
>> that's not a safe choice for at least another year or six. that's not
>> a safe choice for at least another year or six.
>
> He is a businessman, not a geek, so he does not have to risk himself
> using Ruby (and Rails). It doesn't matter. He will not pay me
> anything even if he choose Ruby.

In the context of the enterprise, I agree too. But only in the sense
that 'safe' implies availability of skills, and perhaps tools to some
extent. IMO, Ruby and Rails are 'safe' in the sense that they have
longevity, which I think would be the next biggest concern of
enterprise users.

Rimantas Liubertas

9/1/2006 2:07:00 PM

0

> In the context of the enterprise, I agree too. But only in the sense
> that 'safe' implies availability of skills, and perhaps tools to some
> extent. IMO, Ruby and Rails are 'safe' in the sense that they have
> longevity, which I think would be the next biggest concern of
> enterprise users.

There is another take on what's risky and what's safe:
http://www.infoq.com/articles/From-Java-to-...


Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rim...

Rob Sanheim

9/1/2006 2:21:00 PM

0

On 9/1/06, Dido Sevilla <dido.sevilla@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/...
>
> Actually, despite the fact that I love Ruby a lot, I'm inclined to
> partially agree with him on this. Presently, our company does have
> some Rails-based web applications deployed but they're predominantly
> applications geared for use by only a few people (internal client use
> only); we've not yet tried to deploy a real public-facing web
> application based on Rails. For that, it works really well. We're
> taking a wait and see attitude before we attempt to use Rails for any
> high load applications; my own experiences attempting to optimize
> plain Ruby code for performance have been simultaneously frustrating
> and rewarding. I doubt I could do the same with a Rails app. So for
> now we're gonna stick with PHP for our public facing web applications,
> even if it is even worse for i18n/l10n/m17n applications than Ruby
> is...


I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
"Wasabi":

"Wasabi, a very advanced, functional-programming dialect of Basic with
closures and lambdas and Rails-like active records that can be
compiled down to VBScript, JavaScript, PHP4 or PHP5."

So Rails is too risky, but inventing your own language isn't? Did
someone say "not invented here" ??

Also, I could see how looking at unicode in Rails could scare large
enterprise apps, but the scaling and slowness thing is just FUD.

- Rob
--
http://www.robs...
http://www.seekin...
http://www.a...

James Gray

9/1/2006 2:28:00 PM

0

On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rob Sanheim wrote:

> I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
> yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
> "Wasabi":

I too found that beyond ironic.

James Edward Gray II

Yukihiro Matsumoto

9/1/2006 2:36:00 PM

0

Hi,

In message "Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming"
on Fri, 1 Sep 2006 23:28:09 +0900, James Edward Gray II <james@grayproductions.net> writes:

|On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rob Sanheim wrote:
|
|> I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
|> yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
|> "Wasabi":
|
|I too found that beyond ironic.

That indicates that he trusts himself, and not me (Ruby). And I think
he's right.

matz.

khaines

9/1/2006 2:40:00 PM

0

William Grosso

9/1/2006 2:47:00 PM

0


Well, to be fair, it's not quite that.

Start with http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogBu... --
they had a VBScript app and it needed to be on PHP. So they wrote
a VBScript to PHP compiler.

Good choice, given the market pressures.

Three years later, they've extended that compiler a little in the
direction of a FogBUGZ specific DSL and given it a silly name.

Not particularly surprising, nor particularly relevant to language
debates.


Bill



James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rob Sanheim wrote:
>
>> I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
>> yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
>> "Wasabi":
>
> I too found that beyond ironic.
>
> James Edward Gray II
>
>


James Gray

9/1/2006 2:50:00 PM

0

On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:36 AM, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In message "Re: Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming"
> on Fri, 1 Sep 2006 23:28:09 +0900, James Edward Gray II
> <james@grayproductions.net> writes:
>
> |On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:20 AM, Rob Sanheim wrote:
> |
> |> I find it amusing that he says Rails is too risky and new, yadda
> |> yadda, but then he goes on to talk about their in-house language,
> |> "Wasabi":
> |
> |I too found that beyond ironic.
>
> That indicates that he trusts himself, and not me (Ruby). And I think
> he's right.

Really? I trust you a lot more than me, at least as far as designing
languages goes.

James Edward Gray II

P.S. I've used Spolsky's software and read his books and it just so
happens that I trust you more than him too. ;)