From: Tomas Pospisek's Mailing Lists Date: 2007-03-27T21:43:54+09:00 Subject: Re: On Enterprise Ruby On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Alex Young wrote: > Alexey Verkhovsky wrote: >> I want to ask one more question: why is the E-word anathema in this >> community? Yes, people choose fancy words for self-description. Yes, these >> words can become associated with bad things. And yes, staying away from the >> whole thing is a possible lifestyle choice. Changing the game is another >> equally valid choice, however. So, who or what are we, as a community, >> sending those "$&#* off!" signals to? > > The problem with the term "enterprise" is that it doesn't seem to have a > clear, consistent definition as applied to software (or, indeed, to anything > else), which, in a software-centric community, makes it pretty worthless as a > description. Um well, it's about as clear the expression "software that doesn't suck", which is intuitively understandable by anybody doing software I guess. > As a result, it's not used within the community, and (speaking > from my own point of view) we hear it from outside the community most often > as "Ruby isn't ready for the enterprise," or "Ruby needs to support > buzzword-feature-X to be taken seriously in the enterprise," so it's quite > natural that a negative connotation should be attached - especially when > those criticisms are unjustified. Enterprise means, neither the target nor the one delivering is a 3-man shop and it's not limited to a web-app. Enterprise means the problems you face when you're doing big, integrated apps. > Give us a rational, testable definition of "enterprise," and I think you'll > find, negative connotations notwithstanding (and boy, do I love the term > "enterprisey"), that the test will be passed without complaint. It's just > the utterly nebulous terminology (and the woolly thinking that often seems to > accompany it) which gets peoples' backs up. Starting from the above definition and from my experience, enterprise means integrating accross system boundaries, and integrating means SOAP and XML (I am not arguing here that it can't be done differently). And SOAP and XML is where Ruby is not shining. Thus as a colorary "Ruby is not enterprise ready" as you say. *t -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Tomas Pospisek http://sourcepole.com - Linux & Open Source Solutions -----------------------------------------------------------