From: Robb Shecter <rs@...>
Date: 2002-04-12T09:37:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as replacement for VB?

> > Anybody have any suggestions for using Ruby in place of Visual Basic for
> > doing database front ends?

> Out of curiosity, why do you want to do this?  VB is really good for
> putting together graphical front-ends, if you only target Windows.

Hi,

That was an interesting idea, about using Ruby to create COM objects.  But
there's still a many reasons I want to leave VB 6:

1. It's already deprecated/discontinued. I don't know if .NET is right for
us and our clients.
2. We're having constant problems just deploying Windows apps because of the
incompatibilities between different Windows platforms and stealth versions.
3.  The standard Windows component installation scheme (ie. copy a DLL into
a system-wide directory) is bogus, and leads to lots of headaches.
4. VB doesn't have many modern features as standard that some languages do
(ie. zip compression enconding)

#2, #3 and #4 together mean that we constantly have problems with deployment
and testing that won't go away.  I believe that moving to a language that
strives to be cross-platform (and I'm looking at Ruby, Java, Python, Perl, &
Smalltalk) will, by its very nature make the Windows-only deployment go much
smoother for many reasons.

5. I want to do real OO coding in the interface.  I want to be able to
subclass GUI components, add new features, and let app developers drop these
new classes into their IDEs (or at least code with them) as first-class
components.  (ala Javabeans).

- Robb