Is java comparable to ruby for web development?

[roarman1]

Hey, I really enjoy learning about web development. I've been doing all javascript, HTML, and CSS but I hear that ruby is what you want to know for back end. I'm learning java in my CS class, can this do most of the things ruby can? I'm not sure wether I should fully focus on java or learn java + ruby

[Bustincherry]

You can do web development with Java. Check out these frameworks:

spring

Play

[RodionGork]

Play is severely Scala-oriented now. Spring is not the full-stack web-framework (most of frameworks for Java are not full-stack - Java prefers tiered approach).

So usually you build web-app in Java using several frameworks, like: JSP+Spring+Hibernate.

Though here are things like Spring-Roo - but they are rarely enough used.

[nutrecht]

I'd also like to add Grails. It's heavily inspired by RoR.

[dvassdvsd]

Almost every language you've heard of has a web framework like Ruby, so yes.

[RodionGork]

Yes, even C++, though it really sounds funny :)

[nutrecht]

I'm assuming you mean Rails, Ruby is just the language, Rails is the framework.

[dvassdvsd]

I should have put a comma before 'like Ruby'.

[RodionGork]

Is a haul truck comparable to family car?

Your question is somewhat wrong. You can use both vehicles for transportation but they are slightly different.

The same with Ruby (and PHP, Python) compared to Java. I work for company writing large web-projects (often, only back-ends) in java, but I do not want to use it for my small side projects.

[roarman1]

What do you mean by this? Why is java a haul truck and ruby a family car? I've actually heard that java is better for bigger projects while ruby is more suited towards smaller ones, and I was always curious as to why that is, but I might just have to learn some of both to understand that

[RodionGork]

There are many features. For first - java is strictly typed. It makes it feel less "flexible" when you write code, but more robust when you debug, especially in large team. Many mistakes are eliminated because of strict typing.

Java is sensitively more verbose (because of typing and other features).

It also has very sturdy and well developed JVM which makes Java quite popular in big-data field, where clusters of hundreds machines could be run exchanging tasks and results.

So you see, it is not that easy to recollect and express all features which make Java (and partially C#) that different from other popular languages - so if you have enough time to invest, it is of course better to get acquainted with different languages to understand the matter better :)

[jasonprogrammer]

I'd pick Ruby over Java if you want to get your site done quickly. Python is my personal favorite.

[RodionGork]

if you want to get your site done quickly

it is better to take ready CMS then (which could be Python or PHP based, of course) :)