Zach Dennis wrote:

> The only thing that will stop Ruby from growing is if people don't use
> ruby. If you use ruby, that is a +1 chance that Ruby will be used at a
> company; small, medium, large or huge later this year.

Very true. For larger companies there are typically some PHB's that
look at the current popular technology trends and hop on those
bandwagons. "Let's see...what's the other guy using? Well, if it's good
enough for them we can certainly use it!" Especially since the
technology spending is still probably overall nowhere near where it was
pre-Y2K. Leaders don't want to spend money on hardware, software, or
development/support manhours unless absolutely necessary and proven.
Hopefully stories like yours where Fortune 1000 companies start to
adopt Ruby will catch on and the domino effect will take place.

At my small company I have employed Ruby for everything under the sun
(from admin scripts to office automation to GUI apps) and will likely
replace more old ASP/IIS functions with Rails/Apache as the year winds
up. But at larger companies sometimes it's more difficult to throw the
switch. I recall back in 1997 working for a major cellular company as
IT Field Manager of one of their call centers. Then I started
installing Linux boxes running MySQL to test a replacement for some old
clunky help desk app they had already in place. That didn't go over too
well if memory serves correct :-) Even bringing up a Linux box on the
LAN set off red flags. "Linux, what the hell is that? We use Solaris on
Sun boxes after all."