From: Robert Klemme Date: 2009-06-16T22:15:33+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby feasibility? 2009/6/16 Pascal J. Bourguignon : > Dave Kubasiak writes: > >> Good morning, >> >> I know just about zero about Ruby but the company I work for is doing >> some Ruby development and I need to eventually learn the language. >> There is a program re-write project I need to complete and I was >> wondering if Ruby would be appropriate for it. >> >> The app I need to write is a communication app.  It reads a list of >> devices from a database and uses a bank of modems/phone lines to call >> out and collect data from them at different times.  There are hundreds >> of devices so the app is always running, though it's idle periodically >> throughout the day.  It needs to have a GUI so someone can see at a >> glance what it's doing, and it needs to be multi-threaded.  It would >> most likely be running on Windows since that's the only GUI OS we >> currently have running (we have Solaris and Linux boxes but they're only >> console, not GUI). >> >> Would Ruby be appropriate for this task? > > Definitely. > > >> I've read that it can be >> sluggish and that GUI programming is somewhat lacking.  But I also don't >> know how old those comments were or how Ruby has progesses since they >> were made. > > Well, I would rather provide the user interface as an embedded web > server, so this application can run in background and can be > monitorized from the LAN from any web browser.  There are libraries to > allow you to write simple web servers in ruby very easily. Good idea! Another alternative would be SNMP if integration into some existing monitoring framework is required. >> Or would something like Java, C#, etc, be better suited? > > I'd bet a Ruby solution would be better (easier to write, debug and > maintain).  The only improvement would be to use Common Lisp, but I > guess your company isn't prepared to jump to Common Lisp right now. > In a few years... I wouldn't bet on that a solution in Ruby is better. A Java based solution with a Swing UI would probably be as good. Kind regards robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/