From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2002-12-17T22:09:55+09:00
Subject: Re: help -- persuade my boss to adopt ruby

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002 19:17:34 +0900, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> currently i feel that large projects need discipline, part of
> which is strong (not "strict" :) typing. that is why, i think,
> ruby can't outperform java in "bosses" minds

Strong typing does not impose discipline, any more than language-
enforced formatting imposes discipline (e.g., Python). The people
who impose Java and Java-based solutions do not do so because of
strong typing (which isn't necessarily the case anyway[1]), but
because of strong marketing and strong-arming. The same applies to
C#.

Java has its place, and there's a lot of work that has been done
around enterprise-class work (e.g., J2EE and EJB), and I suspect
that if Ruby could come up with a way of managing some of those
things (e.g., being a EJB container or interacting with EJBs in
predictable ways), then it would gain in the same space that Java is
gaining. But this isn't a core language feature (not really), but a
library. It's also already sort-of possible with JRuby (and there is
that legal bugaboo of a licensing issue where it's not yet non-GPL
and therefore enterprise *unfriendly*, especially given RMS's
statements regarding dynamic linking -- as incorrect as they are).

-austin
[1] I could make all parameters types of java.lang.Object and use
    reflection and introspection to test for response to a
    particular method and then do things that way. There goes all
    that strong typing in Java ...

-- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.12.17 at 08.02.14