Today, I read these two postings about Ruby on Rails: Rails cafe and Tipping Rails. Both postings are written by David Geary, one of the lead-architects of Sun’s Javaserver pages (JSF) project. The first post is a nice metaphore comparing RoR with Java and in the second one David argues why Ruby On Rails can become a popular Web Development Framework (WAF).
Another remarkable thing is that the postings are written by one of the lead-architects of JSF, the new WAF of Sun. But, as David explains by himself, he’s a maven who wants to learn new things and teach them to others. In the end of the second posting he’s also outlining the different places of RoR and JSF in the world of web development. I think he’s having a point for now, but I can imagine that RoR can become a real competitor to JSF once it has become more mature and established.
January 2nd, 2006 at 21:43:11
Interesting posts, but not really helpful in understanding the difference between java and ruby, and the difference between JSF/EJB3/whatever and Ruby on Rails. Do you think that there’s a big difference between java and ruby, and if so, what’s the difference?
I would also like to understand how Ruby on Rails makes you more productive, and how this is different from other frameworks/code generation tools. Can you show me some examples?
January 2nd, 2006 at 22:13:51
Hi Andrej,
I can’t show some concrete examples by myself yet..not yet..I’m still waiting to get my ordered book “Agile web development with Rails” from the Pragmatic programmer. So once it arrives I will start playing around and make myself more familiar with RoR. I also have to say, at the moment I amvalso busy with EJB3.0.
However, You can have a look at my earlier post about ruby on rails. It contains a nice link to a tutorial by O’reilly. That tutorial was the trigger for me find out more about RoR.
I think that the lack of configuration files, a lot of code generation (for example for your model layer), clear and optimized libraries and a lot of support will speed up the development process. However, I am curious about RoR will perform in building complex web application..it is still the new kid on the block..
Concluded, I have to admit that at the moment I also do not have a clear view on the capabillities/advantages of Ruby and Rails, but what I have seen in the tutorial and read on the weblogs by established people, it should be something to pay attention to.
Did you already play around with RoR?
January 2nd, 2006 at 22:19:21
oops, I see now that I made one big link..
I also forgot to react on your question about the difference between java and ruby..
Pfff.. that’s difficult to tell. What I do know is that Ruby is more a real OO language, without any primitive types etc. Everything is an object…Without good programming experience with Ruby, it is not fair to compare both languages..I think
January 2nd, 2006 at 22:26:11
Here are some links to discussions about RoR vs Java.
http://squizlog.keithpitty.org/archives/000235.html
http://tech.rufy.com/articles/2005/03/19/ruby-vs-java-a-matter-of-taste
http://www.theserverside.com/articles/article.tss?l=RailsHibernate
January 3rd, 2006 at 15:50:57
No, I haven’t tried ruby yet. I read a bit about it, but there aren’t many articles which clearly describe the differences between java and ruby. I really would like to see some code examples. I guess i’ll have to try it. That last article that you link to is pretty good, btw.