From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2005-03-22T07:50:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Support for 10x Productivity Increase with Rails!

Mr. Britt wrote:
>>
>>A good deal of development time is figuring out where the specs or goals
>>are wrong or incomplete, and sorting things out.  Once I've written
>>something,  in whatever language, porting it over (or simply rewriting
>>it) almost always goes faster; there's less thinking involved.
> 
> 
> Ok, but what about when you want to add new features to an existing
> ruby app.  What if you're trying to beat your competitors to the
> punch?  If nothing else, I'd pick ruby simply for the ease in hacking
> something together quickly.  


Oh, I agree, and this one of the selling points I turn to when 
encouraging people to use Ruby over, say, Java or PHP.  But I try not to 
make any claims involving direct comparisons.  I see if I can stick to 
describing features inherent to Ruby, with examples.

I, too, have found that one can take a guess at how something is 
supposed to work and be right most of the time.  And I try to convey 
this impressive regularity and the relative absence of special cases as 
an essential feature of being productive with Ruby, more so than any app 
or library.

I'm doomed if I get into a pissing match with an advocate of some other 
language, as there always seems to be some feature or tool that I know 
nothing about.  I've never used Spring or Hibernate or whatever is cool 
this week, so I can't tell Java folks that, say, Og/Nitro will be 
x-times anything for them.

My affection for Ruby, though, is not based on any particular tool, but 
the language itself and the people who support it.

In the end, people preferring to use Java or PHP or Python or whatever 
will look at Wee or Nitro or Rails, steal as much as they can, and be 
better off, and I wish them well.  But it's much harder to copy a 
community and a culture.



James