Working With Rails

I find that if you are in a typically windows based shop (including servers) you often have a staff that doesn’t know linux very well and has no idea how to fix problems or deploy the app, so even if rails will work for an application you often need a box configured and setup and then you need someone who can troubleshoot problems with the web server etc..

I think having an easier experience in deploying and setting up a rails box would help a lot. I think this is an area where virtual appliances could be very useful.

I think if Steve Yegge likes Ruby and Rails to such an extent – yet Google forbids Ruby (or other new languages) to such an extent – that he rewrote Rails in JavaScript… we have a ways to go on adoption.

Programmers that refuse to integrate with anything other than their own code and make you write everything to work with their stuff. :(

Brennan: That doesn’t have to be a problem – I’m working at a corporate with a huge mix of development environments. Everything from C to PHP, including a few Rails projects, and we have a lot of systems that integrate with each other despite being developed in completely different languages. I’d suggest that you push web services, instead of a specific architecture, which will not only allow you to use Rails, but whatever other hot new technology comes up later.

Jay, can you tell me more (or point me to more) on Google forbidding things like Ruby? I am not disputing you, just interested to hear more.

I’d say there’s also a broader issue with adoption/acceptance by corporates – often they’re ‘scared’ of ‘open source’

Some legacy applications of the company will be compatible and will be easy to port in/migrate. The main reason i can see is that FEW RAILS developers are available. LEGACY SYSTEM = LEGACY DEVELOPERS. No offense guys but some or most of these developers stop the urge to study new platform and feared that it will overtook their System.

Poor Scooping and Specification is the best failure reason for MIGRATION.

It is true that Google forbids Rails, but it’s just for AFAIK (I don’t have inside knowledge) for practical reasons. They decided to limit the number of languages that they would use internally, and placed a higher emphasis on tribal knowledge and clean codebases. I don’t think that Google’s decision to forbid Rails means anything one way or another for Rails. It’s just that they had already standardized on Python as their dynamic scripting language of choice, and adding Rails would require adding another dynamic scripting language which is really what they’re trying to avoid.

• development time
• retraining and
• re-testing existing systems to make sure they still work the way they were expected.

These are legitimate concerns for any business.

I’ve generally seen better RoR adoption on new projects (rather than pre-existing ones) as they have fewer of these problems to address.