Re: The wisdom of the object mentors (Was: Searching OO Associations with RDBMS Persistence Models)

Bob Badour wrote:
> Someone mentioned ruby on rails recently. I read where one project
> dropped java entirely after doing a sample module using ruby on rails.
> From what I can gather, though, ruby on rails just does a better job of
> automating all the bullshit boilerplate code rather than really
> improving things.

That's my understanding too. Ruby as a language has some advantages over Java in terms of eliminating boilerplate, and Rails (really a platform in which you can do a lot without knowing much Ruby) demonstrates Ruby's value for easily concocting domain-specific languages (hence eliminating much of the bullshit boilerplate, elimination that the constipated Java will never do well), since it's easy to hook into the runtime system and implement meta-class molestations of various sorts.

Ruby and Rails's popularity, though, is based primarily on their "dynamism"; programmers these days seem to run from static typing like Tokyo residents from a giant moth destroying buildings, completely mistaking the brain-dead literalism of Java for real type systems (e.g. the ML family) and first-class functions.

Languages like Lisp, though, do a much better job than Ruby. The syntax just isn't "cool," whereas apparently Smalltalk variants are.

• erk

"We're through being cool
Eliminate the ninnies and the twits..."

• Devo