I wrote a blog post Java vs. Ruby on
Rails that I thought you might enjoy.
Just some thoughts:
- Controller testing
If you’re using an old framework like Struts 1.2 (it was already
pre-historic and a bad choice), controller testing is a mess. If you
reach newer frameworks (and you don’t even have to go that far, get
WebWork as an example) you don’t have any clutter and you can test
your controllers without using tools like Cactus.
- Code convention
I think you got this wrong, maybe you’re referring to
“convention-over-configuration”, 'cos Java, unlike Ruby, has clear
code conventions defined and documented by Sun (
Oracle Java Technologies | Oracle ).
- Developer tools
Saying that Eclipse’s Java tools are “slightly better” than the Ruby
tools (do they still exist in Eclipse? i’m using NetBeans for Ruby and
Rails coding right now). The JDT is a real IDE for Java development,
fully integrated with the language and environment, the JDT even has
it’s own compiler, for avoid the shortcomings of the “javac” compiler,
beyond that, there are hundreds of plugins to complement the JDT with
deep integrations with other parts of the Java environment (like
AspectJ, Spring IDE and a lot more).
Saying that this is just “slightly better” is really unbelievable,
when the only thing that exists for Ruby is a broken and hard to use
plugin.
- Code library complexities
RubyGems is cool and Java has no packaging system of it’s own, a point
for Ruby, but saying that discovering “which” Web sevices, Java and
Tomcat work together is really simple, download the web services SDK,
it comes with the web services package and a Tomcat configured to work
with it. It couldn’t be better, could it?
- New developer learning curve
Oh yeah, so you don’t even need to know how to code, just get a Rails
book and be done with it, right?
No Ruby learning, write ugly and bad code, you may learn while you
write some piece of garbage.
- Service up-time
Java’s “hot-deployment” feature is a mess and this is not an
application server issue, it’s a JVM issue. You will always have to
restart your server, as wherever you start to use “hot-deployment”,
that is always some memory from the perm-gem that is never reclaimed
(and some servers, like Tomcat and JBoss) are famous for it’s memory
leaks and broken hot-deployment feature.
- Clustering
You don’t mean session clustering and EJB here, do you?
"cos session clustering is one the most evil things you can do with a
web application and EJBs are, well, EJBs 
- International language support
Maybe you should look for Globalize and Globalite. Or even better, try
google → rails i18n - Google Search
I’m a Ruby and Java developer (i even write some code with C# from
time to time…) and i’m not here to sell one or another, but i think
you should read and use the tools a litle bit more before performing
those comparisions.
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Rob M. [email protected]
wrote:
–
Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) | http://blog.codevader.com/
(en)
João Pessoa, PB, +55 83 8867-7208
Rob M. wrote:
I wrote a blog post Java vs. Ruby on
Rails that I thought you might enjoy.
Just a summary criticism: You are comparing apples to oranges, and
this reduces your details to generalizations, like “fruits are sweet”.
Java is a language and Rails is a platform.
And the general rebuttal is Sun supports Java. Ruby has no single huge
corporate backer, meaning its technology must be much higher quality.
Specifically - it will have less “vendor lockin”.
–
Phlip
Maurício Linhares wrote:
RubyGems is cool and Java has no packaging system of it’s own, a point
for Ruby, but saying that discovering “which” Web sevices, Java and
Tomcat work together is really simple, download the web services SDK,
it comes with the web services package and a Tomcat configured to work
with it. It couldn’t be better, could it?
I wrote this about my adventure with Tomcat:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ConfigurationHell
Why does anyone think twiddling endless is “productive”? There’s an
old metaphor - if I had 3 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend 2
sharpening my ax. However, some folks think that the more strokes
required to cut down the tree, the more “progress” we made.
Convention over Configuration is the way to go…
–
Phlip