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I found out today Ruby has a report system thats just a DSL and you can export to PDF, CSV, etc.

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I don’t have a problem working in SSRS, i just hate having to have a … See Moreseparte server and configuration for reports. I think they should be xcopy deployable. I hate SSIS. I’d rather have a DSL for that or even for reports, because then i can do refactoring easier, merges, etc.

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Using Java or Ruby or anything else, you have to code all the UI elements by hand. Thats a huge downside for me. I love being able to drop a GridView on a page and set the data binding to something in my data class. easy peasy. … See More

I’m all for ‘just the code’. I did all my Java dev back in the day in Textpad. I’m just cool like that. But for doing crap at work I need more of a RAD type platform. And nothing is as good as VS for that that I have seen.

BTW, I LOVE SSIS and SSRS. Much better than Crystal/ SAP craptastic stuff. Of course we have a very nice EA so don’t care about licensing. YMMV

Cheers!

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I would argue that Ruby is a much higher level … See Morelanguage than Java or C#, and I would guess that python is similar although I can’t say since I haven’t used it. Ruby has only a few data types like string, fixnum, and hashes/arrays. This makes it a lot easier to deal with and i can focus on business logic. Blocks are neat too and much slicker than lambdas in C#. The other thing is that Ruby has higher quality (IMHO) small building blocks than .NET. When i get a 3rd party library, i never know what i may get–it might be good code, it might be a crappy interface because it was ported from library, it might be total crap source and all. With Ruby the API and source of libraries are consistently good. Remember asp.net 2.0 membership api? Hated it. It was very procedural, it forced you to make those aspnet_ tables there way and if you wanted to override anything there was this giant interface with a mound of methods. With ruby there’s this great gem called devise. Just pop a one liner on YOUR “User” object and you suddenly get all this login, password and security functionality. Your user object is defined exactly how you want–you can add other fields and properties easily. If you want to override methods, table names, properties, etc. you can do so one by one without changing the whole interface.

I will say that the ActiveRecord framework in rails is not enterprise friendly, because the pattern itself is very simplistic and data oriented, but then so is MS’s linq-to-sql and Entity Framework. EF is just now getting a “model first” poco, style approach. with MS its been all about the data–they have been very slow to embrace true OOP goodness, other than the initial .NET framework itself. but rails 3 is becoming very enterprise friendly, enabling you to easily swap out the parts that are two limiting and even in rails 2 its not that bad.

You’re right that there aren’t as many finished applications in Ruby as there are in java, .net and php. Part of it might be because its O.S. and the new kid on the block, but I think that will change. Rob Connery, Scott Bellware and ThoughtWorks (Martin Fowler’s company) among others have all embrace Ruby even for enterprise apps.

A lot of the “enterpriseyness” in Microsoft dev tools is exactly what turn me off to it. I liked silverlight, wpf and wcf, but WCF is really configuration heavy and complex. I hate SSIS, SSRS, WF, and a lot of the tools that require a separate server (and license ) and a rocket science degree to get started. Yet at the same time, I hate the drag and drop mentality that makes no sense in an enterprise application — give me code please, not giant designers that are supposed to program for me and create mounts of unreadable, unmergable, xml! I’ll use design patterns and threading and so forth to handle enterprise and workflow problem domains, thank you very much. why do i need a seperate service installed for reporting again? could it be to sell more licenses?

I think asp.net was genius for its time but its showing its age. The web has caught up. MVC is ok was a “me too” attempt that didnt quite match rails and had a bunch of webforms ugliness left in it. MSUnit i never used but i never understood why they didnt just add support for NUnit, XUnit, etc. They just dont seem to be innovating, especially on the web, but even their enterprise solutions seem to add more complexity rather than reducing it.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Its just my opinion. Windows is definitely much more polished than ubuntu and windows 7 is much better than its predecessors. MS still has arguably the best office apps by far. I just agree with Connery that MS now has a sales guy thats interested in selling server licenses and I as the small guy don’t feel heard. Part of it is a preference of how to work. You like having sharepoint for example, with all its bells and whistles already there built in, and undoubtedly it saves you time because you know the product so well. I prefer the minimalists approach and only have exactly what i need so i can produce the simplist approach possible and code MY way , not how the platform tells me i need to. I’ve also been in a lot of “enterprise environments” where the guys there coded very procedurally used drag and drop approaches that needed DDD solutions and used giant nasty stored procs up the wazoo instead of OOP because thats how MS has been telling them to do it for years (until recently.) So I have my baggage.

I wont stop using their products where the solution warrants it and i’m not saying they are all bad. I’d definitely use sharepoint if someone needed a super big, flexible intranet app that needed to integrate into Windows AD. I’m just not looking to MS for answers anymore.

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Harder to find = harder to screw up. Great for idiots, bad for everyone else.

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