Excellent post Paul! I would like to add on the topic of Java being boring and Ruby is all about fun: - It really depends on somebody's goals â if somebody's focus on the process of creating an application then then Ruby is a winner ( or any toy for that matter); - if somebody is focused on getting job done and move on, then more stable and maintainable technologies like Java, Tapestry, even EJB's are more suitable. IMO it depends where you are, if you are in software vendors camp, than naturally you might be interested more in constant wheel reinvention and endless (and needless) addition of new âfeaturesâ etc. All that RubyOnRail hype is truly laughable at times, just look at the much hyped Writeboard sample application from 37 signals â it is just anemic wiki! How many times do we need needlessly redo the same thing in the next technology/language/etc. People are so busy doing that and do not even think about taking on worthy goals: improving quality of human life by opposing industries which poison air and water, and cause us and our children to suffer, fighting global warming caused by none other than our stupid rush to convert as much as possible and as fast as possible into poisonous waste.
Paul Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I *** Rails ties the database structure very closely to your object structure, so your database tables look a lot like objects. The Rails advantage here is that you can just model out your objects and let the database take care of itself, with very minimal worrying about tables. That ceases being an advantage, however, if you're (1) integrating with legacy databases or sharing the DB with other apps, or (2) your DB is large or complex enough that fine-grained schema control is important. Then Rails' lack of robust O/R mapping really starts to hurt. Tapestry doesn't even get its hands in the DB, so you're free to use Hibernate or Cayanne or raw JDBC or whatever you like. Hibernate is a standard choice. Like Rails, it can autogenerate your schema if you like, but it can also adapt to explicitly designed schemas much better. Unlike Rails, it requires some extra configuration. I personally like the fine-grained control over how my tables are named and indexed, what foreign keys are created, etc. Rails doesn't choose good names for tables, doesn't handle foreign keys well, etc. On the other hand, if you want something running fast, Rails' lack of flexibility in this area also means lack of up-front configuration cost! Konstantin Ignatyev PS: If this is a typical day on planet earth, humans will add fifteen million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square miles of tropical rainforest, create seventy-two miles of desert, eliminate between forty to one hundred species, erode seventy-one million tons of topsoil, add 2,700 tons of CFCs to the stratosphere, and increase their population by 263,000 Bowers, C.A. The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997: (4) (5) (p.206)
