From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-02-16T03:37:47+09:00
Subject: Re: [EVALUATION] - E01: The Java Failure - May Ruby Helps?

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:24:52 +0900, Ilias Lazaridis
<ilias@lazaridis.com> wrote:
> 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
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca