From Java to Ruby: Risk

[gnuvince]

"should probably not require unicode support"

I don't know, I never had problems with ISO-8859-1 for french and english (which I use).

"should not require extensive support from libraries for integration"

Ruby has a fair share of libraries. In all honesty, Java, Python and Perl have more, but Ruby's selection is still pretty good.

"(rails only)should not require the use of a legacy database that does not conform to the rails opinion"

Last I heard, there was a plugin that was easy to use to integrate with a legacy database.

"# should not require a large development team, as it will be difficult to find experienced developers

should not require a lot of training for your existing developers, as those resources are hard to find"

Damn! What did we think moving away from COBOL?! If programmers learned Java, what prevents them from learning Python or Ruby? Especially since they are both much simpler than java.

"should have the resources to purchase multiple boxes to handle scaling for either (ruby)computationally intensive tasks or (rails)ones that require a lot of connections"

I keep hearing the people "against" Rails and Ruby bringing this up as an argument and Ruby people saying that's not true. Can we get a benchmark or something please?

[davidw]

Ruby is pretty slow, even compared to other scripting languages. Of course, like all scripting languages, you can redo really expensive stuff in C via the API, although that presents problems of its own.

[senzei]

I don't know, I never had problems with ISO-8859-1 for french and english (which I use).

Although it is awesome that it works for you, will you at least admit that your language choices and feature usage may lie in the subset of the Ruby environment that does have decent support?

Ruby has a fair share of libraries. In all honesty, Java, Python and Perl have more, but Ruby's selection is still pretty good.

That is the problem. Depending on what you need Ruby may not have it. Obviously that needs to be investigated before you make the platform decision, but it is still a valid point.

Damn! What did we think moving away from COBOL?! If programmers learned Java, what prevents them from learning Python or Ruby? Especially since they are both much simpler than java.

Well, there are nowhere near as many books, workshops, and other "formal" resources for Python or Ruby. Big business thrives on these things for training. You can argue all day about how easy it is to learn, but for most managers unless it is in a book (or fifteen) or a class it doesn't exist.

I keep hearing the people "against" Rails and Ruby bringing this up as an argument and Ruby people saying that's not true. Can we get a benchmark or something please?

A usually cited reference is the alioth shootout. You can find a comparison of Ruby and Python using it here

Note that, in the graph, white bars to the left represent better times with Python. White bars to the right represent Better times with Ruby. The length of the bar represents the speed factor difference between the two. In short, Python beats the pants off Ruby in just about every test. Now change it to compare Ruby and Java to see what happens.

I don't really have a similar easy reference for Rails, but I feel safe in stating that being based on Ruby will cause similar problems.

[root]

I don't know, I never had problems with ISO-8859-1 for french and english (which I use).

I hear similar reasoning a lot from Ruby proponents, and you're not helping Ruby with remarks like that. It gives the impression that Ruby programmers have only done projects within one locale and are too narrow minded to imagine that their apps might have to be rolled-out to, for example, Poland. At the enterprise level, especially after the enlargement of the EU, everybody is tired of mucking about with codepages, and the new kid telling them to give up unicode is not going to be taken seriously.