# Proving Ruby's effectiveness **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 25, 2006, 11:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757 "2006-07-25T11:19:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/1 "2006-07-25T11:19:33Z")
Our company (2500 employees) has a development conference in a few months. I want to present a talk about the effectiveness of Ruby. I’ve been asked (at late notice, grrrr) to give concrete evendence about it’s applicability to different domains, and the productivity that it provides. I’m not particularly interested in raw computing performance: I want to show (if it’s true) that projects built in Ruby will be: Quicker to build, Easier to maintain. If there is a “sweet spot” for which that’s true, then I want to be able to talk about that too, and if there are holes, I’d like to talk about them. If you have seen an article that provides evidence of this, I would be extremely obliged if you could pass me a link to it. Something peer reviewed would be wonderful, but any reasonably believable research would be good. I imagine that it would provide measurements from real project in terms of the dreaded “man days”; “bugs” and “total cost”, etc; and would also give standard code metrics such as cyclometric complexity, source code size, etc. Thanks very much for any help, Benjohn ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/2 "2006-07-25T11:28:55Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > If there is a “sweet spot” for which that’s true, then I want to be able > to talk about that too, and if there are holes, I’d like to talk about > them. > > If you have seen an article that provides evidence of this, I would be > extremely obliged if you could pass me a link to it. Something peer > reviewed would be wonderful, but any reasonably believable research > would be good. I imagine that it would provide measurements from real > project in terms of the dreaded “man days”; “bugs” and “total cost”, > etc; and would also give standard code metrics such as cyclometric > complexity, source code size, etc. This is probably only tangential to what you need, but if it is of any value, here is an article from last year: [http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1778695,00.asp](http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1778695,00.asp) I suspect that numbers and stats such as your people want will be hard to come by. My impression is that 99% of what is out there is anecdotal reports and handwaving. (Frankly, outside the Ruby world as well as within it.) Here’s an idea: Take 3-4 small programming problems (the kind you might see in an undergrad ACM contest). Assuming you are proficient in Ruby, challenge their people to do the same in Java or C++ or whatever language. Time everyone to the minute (letting everyone finish to his satisfaction). Run all programs against a comprehensive test suite (to show how the other guys missed all the edge cases). 😉 Finally show how the Ruby code is 4 or 5 times as compact. Just a thought. Hal ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 1:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/3 "2006-07-25T13:30:30Z")
Hal: > This is probably only tangential to what you need, but if it is of > any value, here is an article from last year: > [http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1778695,00.asp](http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,1778695,00.asp) Thanks Hal, I’ve seen that before, and it’s a good piece of evangalism. > I suspect that numbers and stats such as your people want will be > hard to come by. My impression is that 99% of what is out there is > anecdotal reports and handwaving. (Frankly, outside the Ruby world > as well as within it.) They are available for other languages though. The problem is that to acieve them you need to do a pretty serious study comparing languages, and this is expensive. Really, you want to do at least two studies: A more academic one where you find experienced programmers in your choice languages, and ask them to solve problems. A more practical exercise where you take some real (and comparable) projects, and look at how various languages and frameworks compare. I know I’ve seen a somewhat anecdotal example of the latter in someone’s blog. It did have actual numbers in it though, and I got the impression is was backed up by the business doing research for its management because they cared about the bottom line. > Here’s an idea: Take 3-4 small programming problems (the kind you > might see in an undergrad ACM contest). Assuming you are proficient > in Ruby, challenge their people to do the same in Java or C++ or > whatever language. Time everyone to the minute (letting everyone > finish to his satisfaction). Run all programs against a comprehensive > test suite (to show how the other guys missed all the edge cases). 😉 > Finally show how the Ruby code is 4 or 5 times as compact. Perhaps one day I’ll have the time and money to do that 🙂 Cheers, Benj ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/4 "2006-07-25T19:24:22Z")
unknown wrote: > Our company (2500 employees) has a development conference in a few > months. I want to present a talk about the effectiveness of Ruby. I’ve > been asked (at late notice, grrrr) to give concrete evendence about it’s > applicability to different domains, and the productivity that it > provides. I’m not particularly interested in raw computing performance: > I want to show (if it’s true) that projects built in Ruby will be: > > Quicker to build, > Easier to maintain. Your company is very small, so perhaps the following comments don’t matter to you. But I think you can only touch part of the question with code bake-offs and the like. Some people are interested in whether Ruby is a better choice for relatively large applications that cut across multiple domains and are typically written by and for the use of a single organization. To assess this is a far more difficult question, partly because “better” as used in the preceding sentence requires careful definition, and partly because the raw data are not so easy to collect. Whether or not individual modules are easier to write in Ruby is a question that we probably have the equipment to answer today. But for large applications, I think most people just jerk their knees and assume that dynamic languages simply can’t cut the mustard, and I have an unproven hunch that nothing could be farther from the truth. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/5 "2006-07-25T17:45:40Z")
You didn’t mention whether you would be doing any web development with your company because if you are there are tons of rails comparisons showing the productivity gains using ruby and rails over other things. One well documented study by Justin Gehtland and here is one from Michael E. of [Gusto.com](http://Gusto.com) [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/2006-March/025290.html](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/2006-March/025290.html) Jeff ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 11:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proving-rubys-effectiveness/99757/6 "2006-07-27T11:18:44Z")
I have recently written a white paper that you may interest you… [http://www.abletech.co.nz/white-paper-10-reasons-for-ruby-on-rails](http://www.abletech.co.nz/white-paper-10-reasons-for-ruby-on-rails) Hope it helps Marcus Baguley