Ruby and the Enterprise
Monday, 27 March 2006
James,
Are we still talking about enterprise architecture or enterprise archeology? 10 years ago, the same can be said of Java … i.e. Fortune companies aren’t using it on the server, yada yada. Are you concerned about the lack of maturity in the Ruby offering, or what are you really trying to get at?
Chui
No. 1 — March 27th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Attempting at bringing out an alternative perspective. Only some folks have understood it though. Need to work harder I guess. The main problem with many folks arguments is that they use Java as the example. If you look at why Java was adopted for the enterprise, the argument wasn’t productivity. It was capability.
Enterprises wanted to do business on the web and needed tools to do so, and at the time Java was the best way. Ruby doesn’t provide any new capabilities and therefore cannot follow in the same path that Java has.
No. 2 — March 27th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Thanks for commenting.
If I were the CTO of a Fortune 500, I’d also be very conservative in my outlook. I mean, after all, Java - while not stellar - has been adequate for the job, as long as my main competitors aren’t using something like Ruby to gain a competitive advantage over my company. Heck, people lose their jobs for sticking their neck out for technologies that haven’t been championed by IBM, Sun or Microsoft. People don’t lose their jobs buying technologies that has been championed by IBM, Sun or Microsoft.
So as the CTO, I’m going to sit back and let someone else take the risk, or until there is a compelling need… like when my job is on the line, or when the CEO asks me why is another Fortune 500’s CTO on the front cover of an IT magazine championing Ruby because Ruby can cut the line count by 2/3 … similar to the difference between Java and C.
James, these CTO folks desperately need thought leadership.