From: flxkid@... (Oliver Nelson)
Date: 2003-04-07T14:47:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as a Database Development language?

Thanx all for the replies so far.  More opinions definitely welcome...

A couple more questions.  Does anyone know of any applications that
have a nice simple installation that were written in Ruby?  IOW, an
app that a USER rather than a developer could install?

Also, I guess my question about web based stuff was a little
convoluted.  I won't even try and explain what I mean, because frankly
I'm not quite sure what I meant yet ;)

I looked at the IDE link...seems to be a bit early for Ruby IDEs...no
GUI tools from the link I saw....I remember reading somewhere about
some commercial IDE that was supposed to support Ruby, but I couldn't
even get a beta of it IIRC.

Another thing just popped into my mind.  Are any companies doing
commercial support for Ruby?  Are there any companies that are
investing in extending and strengthening this language?

One more question, not really for Ruby per se, but...:

On most Windows development languages, if I need a tool that does
something that is beyond the scope of what I want to develop for an
application I purchase a COM control.  Maybe its to play some special
multimedia files, or advanced document imaging, or custom date/time
controls, or a instant messaging interface, or whatever!  Is there
anything out there for Ruby/Perl/Python/etc. that gives this for
Linux?  Do people sell "controls" for Linux based languages that do
these types of things?  I know there may be open source alternatives
for some things (that might even work with Ruby), but imaging for
example is an area where I think there probably isn't much (barcode
detection and reading from an image, forms recognition, etc.).

BTW, I'm not asking you all to give me everything here, I'm just
trying to get a feel for non-windows based and open source
development.  I came here because Ruby originated on Linux and it is
the only language out of all the ones I've been looking at that really
made sense to me.

Thanx,

OLIVER
P.S. To Gabriele...first app (a collaborative PIM for a small
insurance company) deployed when I was 13...been doing database work
(corporate for 5 or 6 years and my own company for 3 years now) ever
since.