From: Jeff Barczewski <jeff.barczewski@...>
Date: 2006-07-26T00:45:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Proving Ruby's effectiveness

------=_Part_3317_1578323.1153842306512
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

You didn't mention whether you would be doing any web development with your
company because if you are there are tons of rails comparisons showing the
productivity gains using ruby and rails over other things.

One well documented study by Justin Gehtland

and here is one from Michael Engelhart of Gusto.com

http://lists.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/2006-March/025290.html

Jeff

On 7/25/06, benjohn@fysh.org <benjohn@fysh.org> wrote:
>
> Hal:
> > This is probably only tangential to what you need, but if it is of
> > any value, here is an article from last year:
> > http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1778695,00.asp
>
> Thanks Hal, I've seen that before, and it's a good piece of evangalism.
>
> > I suspect that numbers and stats such as your people want will be
> > hard to come by. My impression is that 99% of what is out there is
> > anecdotal reports and handwaving. (Frankly, outside the Ruby world
> > as well as within it.)
>
> They are available for other languages though. The problem is that to
> acieve them you need to do a pretty serious study comparing languages,
> and this is expensive. Really, you want to do at least two studies:
>
>   A more academic one where you find experienced programmers in your
> choice languages, and ask them to solve problems.
>
>   A more practical exercise where you take some real (and comparable)
> projects, and look at how various languages and frameworks compare.
>
> I know I've seen a somewhat anecdotal example of the latter in someone's
> blog. It did have actual numbers in it though, and I got the impression
> is was backed up by the business doing research for its management
> because they cared about the bottom line.
>
> > Here's an idea: Take 3-4 small programming problems (the kind you
> > might see in an undergrad ACM contest). Assuming you are proficient
> > in Ruby, challenge their people to do the same in Java or C++ or
> > whatever language. Time everyone to the minute (letting everyone
> > finish to his satisfaction). Run all programs against a comprehensive
> > test suite (to show how the other guys missed all the edge cases). ;)
> > Finally show how the Ruby code is 4 or 5 times as compact.
>
> Perhaps one day I'll have the time and money to do that :)
>
> Cheers,
>   Benj
>
>
>

------=_Part_3317_1578323.1153842306512--