Thought Leadership
I work for a Fortune 50 company where I program Ruby on Rails every day. I'd say we're considering it.
I work for a fortune 500 company, we're not considering it. I also just attended a No Fluff Just Stuff conference. Primary topic is Java but there are many Ruby presentations.
Hi James,
I have to disagree with you on this one. Even though I'm an SOA evangelist, I've been using Agile methods for the past four years using Jython, emails etc to integrate with Web Services, HTTP API.
Secondly, all these implementations are with Fortune 200-500 companies.
Funny thing is I blogged about this a few days ago just shows that I've not gone acronym crazy. It's here http://poseidongroove.wordpress....-participation/
Knowing you, this is only to stimulate debate for the right reasons !!
"you will never find a single large enterprise that is even considering it."
Any chance of having this redacted now that we've seen multiple examples of fortune businesses using, or planning on using, or planning on considering using, dynamic languages?
"What is sad is seeing otherwise senseful folks get it twisted by talking about the speed in which development occurs when it [sic] all reality, the costs to develop an application may only equate to 10% of the total cost of ownership."
We also get all twisted about maintaining significantly less quantities of code and XML configuration files, having excellent out-of-the-box support on Linux and BSD distributions, leveraging ~20 years of real field experience in web architecture, being able to work in smaller / tighter groups, not having to deal with the complexities introduced by mainstream vendors, and being able to fully observe and contribute to projects at every level of the stack.
"I wonder if these folks have ever studied software engineering economics? What is even sadder is that many of these folks believe in agile software development yet refuse to consider costs over the lifetime."
Care to actually make a falsifiable statement here? I'd be extremely interested to hear your theories on how agile methodology, dynamic languages, and/or web architecture result in a higher total cost over the lifetime of a product since one of the primary advantage we see in dynamic languages and simple systems is a significant drop in total cost over the lifetime of a product.
"You may have noticed that pretty much everyone in the Ruby camp are insultants with many of them being book authors attempting to capitalize on hype."
I don't consider myself an "insultant" and I've certainly not had the time to write a book. Further, the site hosting the article you reference is ad-free and funded out of my own (currently extremely shallow) pockets. Many of us carry strong feelings about having tools that we feel could significantly reduce issues plaguing IT but are being forced to sit on them, not because they've been weighed and found wanting, but because we can't get anyone to come down to the trenches and take a serious look at what they're really capable of.
O'Grady claims you're a pragmatic, down-to-earth guy. If you can spare a moment, I'd like to propose that we stop generalizing at the level of "the Ruby camp" and "many folks in the agile community" and talk specifically about your experiences and my experiences and figure out why there's such a disconnect. I think dynamic languages are the bees-knees for all the reasons I cited in the original article and this comment. I was an enterprise Java architect at a company that provides integration products and services to a huge percentage of fortune 500 companies. I think dynamic languages and a strong understanding of web architecture could have had an enormous impact on what we did every day and I'd love to understand why your evaluation comes out so different. I've provided a number of specific points on why I think dynamic languages should be sitting at the table and I hope to see you provide hard, technical reasons for why they shouldn't.
Maybe I should slightly rephrase my question to ask the following:
1. Did a consultant bring in Ruby or was it brought in by an employee
2. How do enterprise architects think about Ruby. I believe that the masses aren't.
3. Dynamic languages have their place and help in the rapid creation but that is not where the costs are. Does anyone out there acknowledge this?
4. If Ruby makes so much sense, when will we see enterprise applications, not just web sites or other minor systems being constructed on them...
It sounds like ten years ago you'd have been saying this, for precisely the same reasons:
Java is slow, untried in the enterprise, and the supposed advantages of garbage collection and portability create more problems than the solve. I mean, Java programmers BOAST about not having the power of pointers and multiple inheritance like it's a good thing!
The only thing Java has going for it is a lot of marketing from Sun and IBM. A bunch of consultants bought the hype, overeager IT managers started believing what the guys in blue suits told them, and before you know it we're lumbered with this inferior language.
C++ is a proven solution, and we should stick with it.
why do you feel so threatened?
let the best language/technology prevail
"Hmmm. I would ask the same thing of the dynamic community. Right now, you folks are living on hype instead of stating facts. Name one single enterprise application in the ERP, CRM, etc space that either is written in a dynamic language and/or is being considered ported? Name one system Fortune 200 enterprise that has a mission-critical system written in a dynamic language. Of course, you can't."
Hmm. Does this count:
http://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS040819-1.pdf
You might want to watch how sweeping the statements you make are. Smalltalk is hardly mainstream, but there are plenty of large firms using it for mission critical systems.
"Name one system Fortune 200 enterprise that has a mission-critical system written in a dynamic language."
I could name several dozen systems written in ASP 2.0 which is most definitely a dynamic language.
Good questions James, I believe right now, implementations like Ruby are probably developer lead in a lot of companies. In my example, it's Jython. It's just another programming interface you can use with the platform I used in my example above. You can also use email and HTTP API.
From an architects perspective, I have an open mind about Ruby as long as it does the job, uses defined programmable interfaces that we as architects have provided whatever. I really believe there is a place for all these languages. Charles Miller, you need to move into the 21st Century, the end game for agile languages is to make it possible for end users to orchestrate services and compose them at some point in the future. Your job is to provide these services and empower the users. not to hinder them by being a C++ Bigot
Michael
Many thoughtful comments have been posted above so I'll keep mine brief. James, have you used Rails? If so, what are your impressions from the experience?
Smalltalk has had a long time to gain traction. Unfortunately, folks have voted with their feet and consider it old and weird.
I think JM is talking more along the lines of pragmatic languages like Python/Ruby.
Jason R. Yes, I wasn't thinking about Smalltalk when I was considering dynamic languages. Was focusing my message at the Ruby camp.
James McGovern is an industry thought leader...
An industry thought leader? Bahaha.
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