From: "Michael T. Richter" <ttmrichter@...>
Date: 2008-07-06T15:19:06+09:00
Subject: Re: from ruby/RoR to Java (framework unknown) :(

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On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 04:08 +0900, James Britt wrote:

> If Ruby (with Rails or whatever) is the objectively better choice then 
> you should be able to demonstrate that.  There has to be something 
> tangible, something other than "I like it."


A major supplier of, among other things, medical software recently lost
their security primo who was also a Ruby/Rails advocate.  It became
corporate policy to use Java, you see, and absolutely everything they
did had to be done in Java.  Never mind that said primo was routinely
able to manoeuvre along with the huge, semi-random requirements changes
without breaking a sweat.  Never mind that in his opinion -- keep in
mind that he was hired because he had expertise they didn't have
in-house! -- moving everything over to Java would be a disaster.  Never
mind that when the Java group that was battling him tried to replicate
just one snapshot of his code's capabilities in three months of effort
(it took him three weeks to make that snapshot, and that was with
exploring the domain as well as designing and coding -- they had the
design and the domain exploration already done) they "replicated" it by
ignoring all the requirements that he was working under and provided a
service that would require their users to license very expensive
third-party software components to access.  Never mind all that:
corporate policy was "everything in Java" so everything had to be in
Java.

I really don't like being cynical, I'm just driven to it by observation
of life.  No amount of objective "what's best" will ever reverse a
management decision once it's made.  Rationality has no place in
business management, it seems, only ego.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter@gmail.com> (GoogleTalk:
ttmrichter@gmail.com)
A well-designed and humane interface does not need to be split into
beginner and expert subsystems. (Jef Raskin)

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