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I have to disagree David. In my opinion this is just a case where a
programmer did something a little funky (metaprogramming) and didn't write
sufficient code to check that his funkyness was always inserted correctly.

A great example is servlet code in java.. some things are completely
different in Jetty than they are in Tomcat. Put a webapp written with one in
mind and there's a decent chance it's going to break in the other because
the programmer made assumptions about the environment. This is just like
instiki's developer making the assumption that it would be run under
Webrick. Does this mean that you can't recommend Java either? If so you've
got some problems because we can bring up very similar examples from pretty
much any language. If not, i think you should rethink your decision against
Ruby. It may still not be appropriate for you clients but...

-Kate

On 5/3/06, David Pollak <pollak / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Kate,
>
> I don't think you understand the underlying issue in the post.  It's not
> that Instiki doesn't work... you're right... that's not uncommon.
> It's WHYit does not work.
>
> The reason that Instiki doesn't work under FastCGI because the class load
> sequence running under FastCGI is a different sequence than the class
> loading sequence under  WEBrick.  Because the classes are loaded in a
> different order, some of the metaprogramming stuff that's happening done
> "wrong" and thus Instiki doesn't work.  If a pretty uncomplex system
> (Instiki is not very complex) is so very fragile and subject to problems
> because of the order classes are loaded into the environment, this problem
> will just get worse in complex systems.
>
> Put another way, Ruby programs can break each other because they can
> change
> behaviors of the system and/or my classes.  This makes Ruby programs
> unpredictable, especially in moderately complex systems.  Unpredictable
> are
> not testable.  Programs that are not testable cannot be put into
> production
> in environments such as insurance, financial services, etc.
>
> Thanks,
>
>

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