Ruby on Rails Questions
Which programming languages have you previously used in indursty?
I have used FORTRAN, C, C+, IDL, Perl, shell scripting, Lisp, VB, C#
and Java.
What type of programs have you written in Ruby on Rails for use within
industry? (i.e. any program that is used within a business, to perform
a function etc.)
Real-time information management tool, for in-house use at a power-
generation company.
What made you decide on using Rails to create these programs?
(assuming it was your choice)
Developer time was my most critical resource, due to low budget,
minimal staff and a tight deadline. Ruby and Rails allow developers to
be extremely efficient at producing working code, while offering a not-
terrible tradeoff in terms of runtime efficiency.
How successful were these programs? (how useful were they in the end)
Very succcessful. The application is mission-critical and used widely
by many groups within the company.
Did you feel you made the right decision in using Rails? Would you
have perhaps had a better experience using a different langauge?
Absolutely the right decision. No other language and framework could
possibly have resulted in an equal (or better) product being produced
more quickly and with less bugs.
How do you see the future of Ruby on Rails, as a freelancer?
As all things, RoR is evolving, which is a good thing. Second-
generation frameworks such as Merb, which are faster, more stable and
less buggy than Rails while offering the same (or better)
functionality and minimal syntactic differences are the future.
In addition, the presence of high-performance web servers and “best
practices” books for deployment ensure that RoR and its related
frameworks will be around for a long time (or what passes for it in
technology these days).
Do you see yourself using Rails much in the future?
Yes. I use Ruby for anything more complicated than shell scripting. In
both my professional and personal life, I use Rails as simply the
easiest way to present database records.
How does Rails compare to the other languages you’ve used?
Rails is not a language, it’s a framework. Ruby is a language.
That said, Ruby is the second-most powerful language I’ve used (the
first would be Lisp), while at the same time being immensely more
practical than Lisp in terms of portability, libraries, and
frameworks.
Rails is the most powerful web app framework I’ve used. I think it’s
clearly demonstrated how far you can get simply by establishing
conventions and strictly adhering to design best-practices. Rails is
far superior to previous frameworks, and the Rails clones that are
popping up in other languages all owe a debt of gratitude to DHH and
the Rails core team.
On Mar 19, 1:46 pm, Tim H. [email protected]