My rails exit strategy

Railsters:

While I have work tirelessly on Rails for the past few months, and
boosting
it for years, I have come to an important career juncture, and have
decided
to stop using it. No single reason stands out, but this short list
should
help you all understand my disgruntlement.

  • The “dynamic typing” system should just be called “passive typing”.
    Everything is just whatever type its environment wants it to be.
    Types should be more assertive, to prevent bugs, and every interface
    should declare what types it takes. This also helps self-document.

  • Between Monkey Patching and Ruby’s absurd “Module” system,
    every object essentially sprouts every method of every other object.

  • The unit tests are easy to write for simple things like a database
    hit, or checking that HTML contains a given field. But they are
    absurdly hard to write for anything non-trivial, and this just takes
    time from debugging. If the tests’ primary purpose are to provide
    what normal languages do internally, with simple type checking,
    then I can kill two birds with one stone by not writing unit tests
    and by switching to a much stricter typing system. I will start
    using Design by Contract, on websites, immediately.

  • When the time comes to “pick a language”, keeping track of
    which one you are in is a total pain. If you are inside Ruby, the
    #{} will insert contents into a string. But in RHTML, <%= %>
    inserts it. And don’t get me started on the horrors of trying to
    figure out if I should write ", ", \', ', ", or ' into
    some string that may or may not emerge as JavaScript…

  • Because of Passive Typing, the editors can’t provide
    typesafe command-completion, or even a simple Refactoring
    Browser.

  • To scale, you just buy more servers. Oh, I can’t wait to tell
    my penny-pinching client that one!

  • Ajax destabilizes both servers and browsers. 'nuff said.

  • Also, I heard a rumor that someone is going to sue 37signals
    for allegedly making web development “easy”. The time is now
    to get clear of that debacle!

In summary, Rails is simply a way to allow inferior programmers to get
by
with adequate website features. It is not a tool for serious or scalable

I am switching back to Tomcat immediately. I’m downloading it now, and I
expect to have it configured by May 1st.


Phlip
"Pigleg too?", week 1

Phlip,

I was wondering if you’ve gone bananas as I read, but I think you’ve
forgot to add:

Happy April Fool Day!

Regards,

– Long
http://MeandmyCity.com/ - Find your way
http://edgesoft.ca/blog/read/2 - No-Cookie Session Support plugin

----- Original Message -----

Long wrote:

Happy April Fool Day!

Thank you. (Bats eyelashes.) The worst AFDJ is when nobody
acknowledges an attempt!

And to this day, you will find nitwits saying everything I said about
Duck Typing and TDD…

But the local Rails group sure trumped me:

http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/sdruby/2007-April/001725.html

(Note I cited that, too…)


Phlip
"Pigleg too?", week 1

And of course I read this on April 2nd, having basically already forgot
about April Fools, thinking “has this guy gone completely batshit
insane?”

Thanks for the laugh. Now I should get back to work.

Jason