From: Richard Conroy <richard.conroy@...>
Date: 2006-11-29T20:02:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Is ruby a viable corporate alternative?

I am not sure what you mean by *corporate* alternative, that term in
my mind suggests internal applications to an enterprise.

One area that Ruby is going to have trouble with is on Windows. Ruby is a great
experience on Unix & Mac environments, but it can get pretty clunky on windows.
For GUI-based applications you can have some byzantine install procedures
(the GUI admin client installation for SQLite takes the piss).

Rails on Linux massively outperforms Rails on Windows, thats probably not a huge
deal, but the support ecology is biased towards Unix environments - don't expect
the plugins and libraries to always have windows equivalents or the
windows equivalents
may be less mature or less well tested (not enough eyes). Often you simply have
less options as a developer when you are shipping on a windows platform (like
no Capistrano).

Ruby is a great language but if windows development is of primary
interest to you,
you will have to curtail your ambitions or research the problem thoroughly.