[ruby-talk:15729] Re: every body wants java

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Je Vendredo 25 Majo 2001 12:40, vi skribis:
> It's not that everybody wants java, it's simply that these corporations now
> "have" java infrastructure.  A middle manager faces far less red-tape when
> deciding to do new development in java than in some less widely deployed

Here's an example that validates the previous assertion:

There is an internal US Forest Service product called Informs.  Informs is a 
hodge-podge of programs written in at least 5 different languages (C, TCL, 
korn shell, pro-C, and Avenue, among others), tied together mostly with shell 
and TCL scripts.  This is the result of many different people contributing to 
the project over time, and those people using whatever language they felt 
most comfortable with.  Now, I'm all for "the right tool for the right job", 
but Informs is a nightmare to maintain and extend, and is arguably limited by 
the sort of batch process structure it has developed in large part as a 
result of this patching together of programs.  Informs illustrates how 
important it is to analize the project requirements, put some thought into 
the development language choice, and then stick with those choices until you 
have a compelling enough reason to change languages.  Informs is an example 
of the Unix philosophy "one tool, one job" gone mad, and at its worst.  After 
the decision has been made to use a new language, I'd argue that the best 
thing to do is rewrite the old code in the new language, or at least make 
sure enough resources have been allocated to performing this conversion over 
time.

BTW, I contributed to the Tower of Babel of Informs recently by rewriting a 
shell script in Ruby; I justified this by the two orders of magnitude I saved 
in runtime speed, and I'm pushing to retrofit Informs by replacing the shell 
and TCL code with Ruby.  We shall see.

I do believe that most jobs require two languages.  I really like Java, but 
it isn't a good scripting or text processing language.  On the other hand, 
Ruby is primative in the GUI department and lacks Java's extensive tool set 
- -- I believe someone earlier called this toolset "bloat".  I can easily 
imagine that sometime in the future, after Ruby has obtained some "bloat", it 
will be able to fill both language niches, but not, IMHO, at the moment.

> you can find one in an XP shop?  I would bet you would be able to use Ruby
> as a prototyping tool.  You might even be able to make yourself into the

I've found that, since reading the Axe book, most of the pseudo-code that I 
now write looks like, and turns out to be, valid Ruby code.

I'm eagerly anticipating the Java-based Ruby interpreter... who is working on 
that project?  I'd like to contribute.

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