I came across an interesting discussion happening in Linked In RoR group with the topic RoR compared with other development platforms..
Lets see how this topic got started, the community opinion and finally my opinion.
The question was initially asked by Madeleine Noland saying
She is looking for articles, white papers, research comparing RoR with other development platforms. Why businesses are adopting it/avoiding it? why developers like/dislike it? and so on.
For which several people responded back, which can be summarized as:
Developers Likes it, because
- Its fun,easy, fast, enjoyable development process
- Team feels faster development time compared to Java
- Rails 3 is fixing some rails issues by merging Rails and Merb framework
- It integrates well with MySQL, sqlite
- Lots of community support when you need help
- Its helps a team a pick project quickly where the existing team left off
- Lots of plug-in capability with community support
- Developers likes RoR because of RUBY.
- Ted husted (creator and prominent leader of Java Struts 2) said “Personally, I’d characterize going over to Rails as walking into the light :)”
- The effortlessness of meta-programming in Ruby is pretty cool
- Learning RoR has been a breeze
Why business adopts it, because
- Very fast product take off, cheap, easy maintenance, flexibility to change.
- Simplest way to deploy and maintain the project lifecycle
- Rails is more adopted in startup business
If you are looking for a white paper, then Mark Menard suggested the link
http://infoether.com/ruby-and-rails-whitepaper.
http://isitrails.com/ lists sites stats developed using RoR
Top 50 ruby on rails websites/
List of Indian RoR websites
So, whats my take on this topic?
- Firstly check whether you have a right dev team for RoR, if so then go for RoR. If your team is more Java savvy then better go with Java than pushing the developers to pick RoR just because its easy to learn and deliver fast results
- There is stronger perception in the market than RoR is not ready for Enterprise platforms, and Java is the one for Enterprise application development. Its may be yes and no. It there is dilemma between choosing RoR or Java, then do required number of Spikes and then make a decision
- Check the given web frameworks (be it RoR or Jboss Seam or Groovy) supports Agile driven development.
I wouldn’t agree with the rant going on that RoR has faster development cycle compared with Java. I know a couple of Java programmers who have technically proved it wrong during a Rapid Application Development Race programme. Still today C,C++ out beats Java out beats Ruby when its come to performance.
Please share your view as well.
