From: Nithia Govender Date: 2006-11-12T01:08:51+09:00 Subject: Re: Rails vs. Asp.Net politics On 11 Nov 2006, at 00:54, Leslie Viljoen wrote: > On 11/10/06, Nithia Govender wrote: >> >> On 10 Nov 2006, at 14:23, Leslie Viljoen wrote: >> >> > >> > I think so, although in the backwater of South Africa, very few >> people >> > have ever heard of Ruby or Rails! I have yet to see a single >> book here >> > on either subject. >> >> All I can say is that you're not looking at my bookshelf :) From >> where I sit in my South African backwater of a study, I see two Ruby >> books, plus a PDF or two. In my work environment, most people have >> heard of Ruby and Rails. Most view Rails with a certain scepticism, >> especially given that we do most of our work in Java. Looking at the >> scary complexity of many of the apps we produce for our customers, I >> can see why Rails, with it's "constraints are good" philosophy, may >> not be the best framework for every Web app. I must admit that I >> haven't done much work in Rails, but for me Ruby itself is a >> beautiful, elegant language that is a joy to program in. > > Wow, I have searched this backwater as best as I could to find other > Ruby programmers here! I also search every bookstore I go into for > Ruby books - where did you get them? I have many, but all ordered from > overseas. > > Would you agree with the idea that Ruby/Rails on your CV might be > better than ASP.NET (if you already have C# there) - in South Africa? > > Also, where do you work? Guruhut.com doesn't resolve to a www server > right now... > I'm mostly a Java programmer (yes, I know, the Dark Side :), but I have enjoyed Ruby since I first discovered it a few years ago. I would think that Ruby/Rails on your CV (if you already have C#) would be a good thing. It's bound to get going here eventually, even though the larger South African corporations all seem to have sold their souls to either Microsoft or IBM. As for books, I almost always order programming books from Amazon or the like. Bookstore here seem incapable of carrying anything more substantial than "The Dummies Guide to X", "Teach Yourself Y in 21 Days" and an infinite number of titles having something to do with MS Office. And don't get me started on the insane markups on technical books. A book that costs $30 on Amazon is likely to set you back R500 or so in a local bookstore. Even assuming an exchange rate of R8 to the dollar, that's still twice what you should be paying. Sorry about the Web site issue. We're busy moving servers, so the DNS entries may be still a little messed up. www.guruhut.co.za should resolve correctly. Later N