[ruby-talk:4565] Re: What's the biggest Ruby development?

Dave Thomas answered:

> > Out of curiosity, what is their threshold of large?
> 
> John Carter was asking about 2+ man-years.

Dave, 

while I know this is quite unnecessary detail, and you're probably very
aware of it, I thought to mention it anyway.

I made my small server "prototyping" it in Ruby and see if it could work.
Let's say it was about 2 weeks of work.

If someone asks me to code that thing again (even now that I have the design
on my head, and all the tricky parts have been solved at least once) and
would require it to be coded in Perl I'd ask time for 4 weeks.

Make it Java, and I would double it again.

Make it C, and I would consider doubling it yet again.

So my point is that I don't think I'll code anything 2 man-year thing in the
near future in Ruby. But I might code 2 man-year thingie supposed to be
delivered in C, assure them that we really can use Ruby and it saves money
and time for them, and complete it in time, which is talked easier in
months.

This example is purely made up, as I haven't had any chance to develop same
thing concurrently in two different languages. So the numbers or
multiplication factors are not *really* the powers of two (maybe not even in
this order), but I guess my point shines better because of the use of the
quite familiar number sequence.

	- Aleksi