Ruby on Rails

It is hard to be excited over a new language nowadays, but recently I came across one which seemed to make web & database development fun again.
I am referring to the combination of Ruby & Rails (RoR). This was a framework built for real world development problems rather than for 'building a framework' as per it's founder.

It has several interesting features:

1. Lack of strong typing & support for 'duck typing' - it works even though you feel lost sometimes if you have been a C/C++/Java/C# programmer.
2. Configuration by convention - no need to configure stuff if you follow the convention, but you can configure if you need to as well.
3. Brevity of expression - introduced by C which can easily get you a cult following. eg. one line to write a program which prints itself.
4. Dynamic nature - ability to add methods or redefine methods on the fly - to any class in the system, even built-in ones.
5. script/console - a hidden gem, difficult to live without once you use it.
6. code generation & metadata programming - similar to wizards in VS, but used for many more tasks and ActiveRecord takes metadata programming to next level.
7. production vs development vs test modes - is there any web app which has the same env in development & production? RoR acknowledges that.
8. Agile development, unit tests & scaffolding - it is constantly evolving, encourages testing, scaffolding is now getting obsolete in EdgeRails but useful.
9. AJAX & REST - supports the latest trends in web development, Java is just beginning to have a JSR to support REST!
10. Moreover, it encourages you to provide features and not spend time write ORM xmls or waste your machines resources running a J2EE server!!

Some of these features are 'interesting' and could be scary to a C++/Java developer or someone with an enterprise development background.
But, you have to consider that this is mainly for web server side development with a lot of work on databases!
JAVA had it's run with banks & financial institutions but it seems RoR just needs a corporate sponsor to mature & succeed in the long run - Hint: IBM, Oracle, Sun.

Note: RoR is already several years old now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Google Appengine

It was good while it lasted, Google AppEngine gave developers an easy way to create web applications without worrying about scaling it or being a sysadmin. There were numerous startups that built their products on Google Appengine. Even after beta, there was a fairly large free quota that made it a reasonable choice. But, the current pricing seems a bit ridiculous for those who are looking for a free or cheap solution or for those enjoyed the initial quotas. Perhaps, we were spoiled and Google’s goal is to get rid of free-riders which is not exactly evil from Google’s perspective. So, it is 2012 and welcome to reality since Google can’t maintain those quotas forever and the current free quotas are intended to only test your application before you go live. If for some strange reason, your application becomes popular and gets more than 1,000 users, you would end up scrambling for an alternate solution since you will find yourself paying through the nose. The quota system is complica...
Read more

Blackberry Playbook

RIM introduced the "Playbook" tablet computer with much fanfare yesterday.It relies on Flash & HTML5 as the key development platforms. RIM was able to build the compatibility for existing apps on top of QNX which is good. It was smart to rely on the HTML5 platform given the poor UI capabilities in the existing Java framework, it wasn't clear if the tablet supported native game development despite the support for OpenGL in QNX platform. The specs are great compared to the existing iPad, RIM did need some +ve hype at this point after the Torch fiasco. It is just 10mm thick compared to 13.4mm for the iPad and I thought iPad was thin. It has a 7" screen, but the resolution is 1024x600 whereas it is 1024x768 for the 9.7" iPad. Playbook also comes with a dual core 1GHZ processor compared to the single core CPU in iPad. Playbook also comes with front and back cameras and HD display with HDMI output compared with none for iPad. It also tethers with the Blackberr...
Read more

What is up with RIM?

RIM is one of the leading technology companies in Canada and one of the largest employers in Waterloo. There are a few strategic mistakes that seem obvious in hindsight, but it is easier to list them now than to predict in advance. RIM is losing market share in North America, but surprisingly the execs were focusing on developing markets for growth. Obviously, profit margins from developing countries are minimal when compared to the lucrative NA market. RIM’s strength is in the enterprise market. The primary growth is happening in consumer market, but RIM has had trouble gaining traction there. RIM will continue to rule the enterprise for now, because changes come at a slow pace there. Still, the consumerization of IT is the biggest threat for RIM in this area. The current instability doesn't help them advance in enterprise either. RIM is losing the high end smart phone market which is ruled by Apple and Android devices, but instead is happy with the wins in mid-low end ...
Read more