From: Bosko Ivanisevic <bosko.ivanisevic@...>
Date: 2009-06-16T22:50:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby feasibility?

On Jun 16, 3:15 pm, Robert Klemme <shortcut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2009/6/16 Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com>:
>
>
>
> > Dave Kubasiak <dave...@hotmail.com> 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 endhttp://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

Although I prefer Ruby for lot of tasks over other programming
languages I would recommend you C#. Since you are already on MS
Windows platform using C# is definitely the best choice. Creating form
(s) for monitoring is very easy and development is quite fast. In
addition debugging C# applications in Visual Studio is much, much
better than you'll find for Ruby.

Best regards,
Bosko