On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 09:45:54AM +0900, William Grosso wrote: > > At the risk of talking to a wall ... give me a break. > > Ruby's a very nice language. Rail's an amazing framework. > > But. They are neither dominant nor even close to universally > appropriate. They have things they do well, and they have things > they don't do well, and they have things they don't do at all. > And they have design foci which make them appropriate for some > tasks, and not appropriate for others. Who said otherwise? And why are you top-posting? > > All of which should be completely obvious. > > Here's the sermon: Pretending that decisions you don't understand > were made entirely for political reasons, or because the people making > the decision are stupid, is a sure-fire way to prevent yourself from > ever learning anything. Instead of indulging in free-form bile, why > not ask "What would have to be true for that to be the right decision?" Perhaps you should read what I said a second, and maybe even third, time. In paraphrase, it was (summarized): Regardless of how good or bad a decision a given language is for a given task, Ruby is more likely to get you fired that Java. > > You'd be surprised how much insight such a simple question can > generate. You might be surprised by how much actually reading and trying to understand makes, as opposed to jumping to conclusions about someone's malicious intent regarding a discussion of the corporate politics of language and tool choice. Despite the fact it got this far via top-posting, a no-no here at ruby-talk/comp.lang.ruby, I'll leave the text you quoted at the bottom so you can more easily peruse it again at your leisure. > > Chad Perrin wrote: > >On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 07:15:32AM +0900, Alvin Ryder wrote: > >>As for developing major sites with Rails, most managers don't have the > >>balls. They'd rather pay millions to get a java solution, it isn't > >>their money on the budget so they gutlessly pour it down the java hole > >>and hope for the best. If the project fails they blame the team or > >>throw more money and bodies at the problem, of course it's not java's > >>fault or theirs. > >> > >>Anyway I don't hold prejedice again java or c# but they are in no way a > >>safe bet. > > > >Sure it is. You'll (almost) never have to fear for your job based on a > >decision to go with Java or a Microsoft "solution", even if it is > >entirely the WRONG decision. You could cost the company millions, end > >up getting dozens of people laid off, and tank the entire project, but > >if the language by which you did so is Java or C# you may still have job > >security (as long as you haven't made other high-profile bad decisions). > >The problem with job security in that circumstance only really arises if > >there was a bitter power struggle over whether to go with Java or .NET, > >and your side "won", then the project tanked at a cost of millions. The > >opposing "side" might just blame the language/framework decision. > > > >On the flipside, even where from a technical standpoint it's almost > >impossible to avoid thinking something like Ruby on Rails, or Perl's > >Catalyst, or Python's Django, is the best option, you may well find > >yourself losing a job even if you made the right decision and the > >project was well on its way to being a howling success. All it takes is > >a poorly-timed change in management structure, and they may junk all the > >work that has already been done at a cost of millions to rewrite > >everything in Java or C# (or, God forbid, VB.NET), and fire you and all > >your buddies for doing great work very quickly in the "wrong" language. > > > >Corporate politics. Whee. > > > > > > -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do." - McCloctnick the Lucid