On 2/11/07, Bharat Ruparel <bruparel / mercury.com> wrote:
> My question to you all is:  have you found a
> good reason (or reasons) to use Ruby on Windows to do any real
> commercial work?   Or is it because Windows is so all pervasive?

It depends on whether the output of your effort is (1) a Ruby application
that you ship to windows clients or whether (2) Ruby is used in the
development of windows-deployed apps (i.e. in automated testing,
development tools, but Ruby code is not shipped to customers).

For (2) Ruby is great. Really great for all the reasons you have already
discussed.

For (1) though, Ruby is a bit of a mixed bag. Client applications require
a mix of windowing kits, and this can make for some very byzantine
installation options. In general, if it doesn't look like windows on a windows
OS that works against you.

Rails hosting on windows doesn't appear to have
the scalability of the Unix options, and you will have to work harder
to get it. You also miss a lot of the interesting stuff available to Unix
railsers (like an easier-to-install RMagick (basically graphics), and
good stuff like Capistrano). A Rails corporate intranet application
could be quite successful on Windows hardware, but if your company
is large I would just host it on Unix hardware.