At 2:53 AM +0900 4/3/02, Kent Dahl wrote:
>Mark Probert wrote:
>>  Can any on the list who are familiar with both Python and ruby comment
>  > on the last sentence of the above?

I've used C, Objective-C, perl, python and java heavily. Switched 
from perl to java when I realized compile-time type-checking had real 
benefits for building dynamic web-based systems when the only people 
involved are programmers. This is discussed in detail under 
http://virtualschool.edu/jwaa; for example, 
http://virtualschool.edu/mybank is entirely implemented in this way.

These advantages don't apply to websites that require collaboration 
between programmers and non-programmers (teachers in my case). The 
dominant factor there becomes the non-programmer's need to see 
changes reflected in the running system without the compile/restart 
cycle. I've recently switched to ruby for this project after 
considerable work on the hybrid java/jython/xslt hybrid 
implementation mentioned in the http://virtualschool.edu/jile 
announcement.

I've tentatively aborted the hybrid approach which was impossibly 
slow (even with caching to incur the xslt overhead only when files 
change). I think the problem is the jruby/java interface, which is 
poorly optimized. And python's support for string inclusions 
(#{whatever} in ruby) is so bizarre that teachers couldn't use it.

Current design is to dispense with compile-type typing for this 
project and have  programmers and teachers both work in a ruby 
enviroment. So far so good, although I really miss the ability to 
detect invalid cross-page hyperlinks links at compile time.
-- 
Brad Cox, PhD; bcox / virtualschool.edu 703 361 4751
o For industrial age goods there were checks and credit cards.
    For everything else there is http://virtualschool.edu/mybank
o Java Interactive Learning Environment http://virtualschool.edu/jile
o Java Web Application Architecture: http://virtualschool.edu/jwaa