From: Jay Levitt <jay+news@...>
Date: 2007-10-21T11:45:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Ruby For Me?

On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:10:58 +0900, Tony De wrote:

> My question is this:  Is ruby for me?  

I actually read in a book yesterday that it was specifically not for you. 

(No, I jest.)

> Moreover, can I develop
> traditional as well as database driven "GUI" apps such as I would in
> Delphi or Visual Studio for that matter?  Or is it geared for a
> "Browser" based interface?

There are not a large number of GUI-style Ruby apps today; it's not that
they can't be done, but that the interest just hasn't been there.  Ruby
does support several GUI frameworks - Gtk, FOX, Qt3/Qt4, wxWindows, maybe
others.  

You won't find the integration of IDE, language, and GUI library in Ruby
(or any other language, really) that you're used to in Delphi; Delphi is a
self-contained system.

Some languages, like C or C++, have tightly integrated IDEs (Visual Studio)
but require you to choose a graphics toolkit.  Some, like Java, have a
tightly integrated IDE (IntelliJ, Eclipse) and a "standard" graphics
toolkit (Swing) but allow other toolkits (SWT).  But Ruby, Python, Perl,
and other dynamic languages aren't tightly bound to any IDE or any graphics
toolkit; that's both an advantage (in flexibility) and a disadvantage (to
the novice programmer who just wants to write a GUI app).

Ruby's definitely not geared toward the browser specifically; Rails
obviously is, but Rails is just a Ruby-based framework.  You can, in fact,
do just about anything in Ruby that you can do in any other language, and
vice versa; whether Ruby makes it easier or harder than [your favorite
language here] is a matter of opinion and depends highly upon the specific
applications you want to write.

As for IDEs, until fairly recently, there were no good choices.  Many Ruby
programmers use TextMate or another text editor.  In the past year or two,
support for Ruby has been added to Eclipse (via Aptana RadRails [free] or
3rdRail [commercial]), IntelliJ, and the upcoming NetBeans 6 from Sun.

-- 
Jay Levitt                |
Boston, MA                | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm         | - Kristoffer