From: "S. Robert James" <srobertjames@...>
Date: 2007-03-30T09:35:12+09:00
Subject: Re: On Enterprise Ruby

Really? You can't respect the idea that a library which not even the
developers feel comfortable calling "production ready", and which
hasn't stood the test of time, may very well have a high number of
bugs?  Esp. the kind that show up in nonstandard deployments or heavy
usages?

Now, a lot of people have written "there are plenty of buggy libraries
with high version numbers".  This is most certainly true.  But, to
invoke Aristotle:

(version > 1) --> high reliability IS NOT TRUE
But,
high reliability --> (version > 1) CAN STILL BE TRUE

I've used http-access2, soap4r, REXML, popen4, rubygems, etc., and the
Ruby interpreter itself, and eventually hit bugs in every single one
of these, at least on some platforms.  (Yes, I do search for bug
reports and file one if there isn't one already).  It's gotten to the
point where, if I'm faced with an inexplicable bug in my code, I make
sure to stop debugging my code and confirm that the library it is
using is itself bug free.  This is a far cry from where things should
be (cf. 'select() isn't broken'), and is a lot less than the QA
provided by J2EE or Microsoft, for that matter (there - I praised
Microsoft publicly - now I've definitely lost your respect :-) .)

QA aside, Ruby's library coverage leaves a lot to be desired.  It
seems there's a consens on soap4r.  What about HTTP accesss? cURL is
wonderful, and has great bindings to dozens of languages - but Ruby is
left with http-access2, which is very underpowered compared to cURL.
What about image processing?  Look at all the complaints of
reliability, memory leaks, and restarting daemons you get with
RMagick!  What about file compression?

Another point: error handling.  Half the core libraries provide very
cryptic error messages when something goes wrong.  Google the mailing
lists and you'll see lots of cries for help.  This is another area
which needs improvement.

On Mar 28, 10:07 pm, James Edward Gray II <j...@grayproductions.net>
wrote:
> On Mar 27, 2007, at 8:05 PM, S. Robert James wrote:
>
> > 1. SOAP.  This is a biggy.  It's the top of my list of "real
> > hesitations before recommending Ruby".  Large apps need to talk to
> > other apps.  Often, this is via SOAP.  Now, soap4r is buggy, poorly
> > documented, and worse of all, has very incomplete WSDL support.
>
> I have to agree on this one and it make me sad.
>
> I've had to use this library three times in the last month and all  
> three have been insanely painful.  It is easier to just capture a  
> well-formed request and fill it out as a template and this is tragic.
>
> This has become the number one standard library I really want to see  
> redone.
>
> > 2. Immaturity of Libraries. How many of the libraries that your
> > project depends on have version numbers < 1.0?  'Nuff said.
>
> And then you lost all of my respect...
>
> James Edward Gray II