From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2006-01-04T03:11:51+09:00
Subject: Re: application and web app technologies

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 9:47 am, cartercc@gmail.com wrote:

> I don't expect the 'magical beast.' What I do expect is several posts
> along the following lines: 'We faced a similar situation, and used X,
> Y, and Z. X proved the best choice because of reasons A, B, and C. The
> problem with Y was D and the problem with Z was E.'

I think, though, that what you will find is that there is someone who can give 
that answer for many different values of X, Y, and Z.

I flipped, cold turkey from Perl to Ruby nearly 4 years ago, as I said.  I was 
convinced that for sysadmin programming and web site/application programming, 
I would get better productivity and maintainability from Ruby than Perl, even 
though I had vastly more experience with Perl at the time.

IMHO, I made the right decision, for me.  I have some Perl legacy systems that 
I have had to maintain, though I have converted a portion of those to Ruby 
systems, and I occasionally have to do new work in Perl or PHP or, rarely, 
other languages, but Ruby is the primary programming language, day to day.

I doubt that you will have to look hard to find someone who will say the same 
things about Python, though, nor will you have to look far to find people who 
say that my assessment was wrong, and that if I had been smarter, I would 
have been just fine or even better off sticking with Perl.

So, I'll reiterate what I said before.  Take a look at the previous threads 
along these lines.  Take a look at the Ruby advocacy link that was provided, 
and then see if you have any specific questions that we might be able to 
answer about Ruby.


Kirk Haines