Obie writes a bang-up piece in praise of Ruby. Coming from ThoughtWorks, I know just where he's speaking from when he says:
The nubys that do not have OO programming experience are being helped by Ruby old-timers and the other significant group of developers streaming into the Rails community: senior Java developers looking for something better that what we have to deal with now.Yes, I am one of those senior Java developers. And where did I first hear of Ruby? At ThoughtWorks. If a long-time, hard-core, high-end shop like ThoughtWorks is preaching Ruby to clients like some vanguard of the proletariat, then the revolution is well underway.
1 comment:
I think we all know that there's a big difference between the things that individual thoughtworkers are excited about and the things that the company is recommending to clients.
Whilst there are certain situations where the ability to quickly create a web application suggests the use of Rails most of the work we do isn't feasible in Ruby and we're not irresponsible enough to advise clients to bet their businesses on bleeding edge technology.
The people who are raving about RoR are classic early adopters/innovators and they're making the mistake of extrapolating solely from their own experiences. The other side of the chasm is populated by people who care about different things and use different metrics to evaluate technologies.
The teleological thinking that was Marx's flaw is being repeated here but this time it's manifesting itself as the kind of technological determinism that Wired used to publish.
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