Pros/Cons of Turbogears/Rails?

[Ray]

Paul Boddie wrote:
<snip>
> Sure. Just get certified on whatever today's middle management are
> advocating, spend a few years working with that stuff, then repeat the
> process for the next generation of middle management - it can certainly
> make money for people who don't seek any meaning in what they do.

It can certainly make money--true. "Don't seek any meaning in what they
do"?! You're just accusing a lot of honest hardworking people to be
mindless drones there. We have feelings too, you know :(

> > Yeah, see, the thing is that Python is not lacking luminaries endorsing
> > it either, e.g.: Eric Raymond and Bruce Eckel. But for some reason this
> > "Python is good" meme is not that viral. I wonder why...
>
> Python has had its share of the spotlight: Eric Raymond's advocacy
> dates back to the late 1990s; Bruce Eckel still advocates Python but
> started doing so a few years ago. Perhaps the latest arrivals to the
> party (celebrating dynamic languages in this case) are usually the
> loudest, in order to make up for their sluggish realisation that Java
> isn't the panacea they insisted it was while it was still the cool new
> thing. Or perhaps a lot of these people do quite nicely out of surfing
> whatever trend currently is the cool new thing.

Perhaps that is true. A pity though, personally I tried to learn Ruby
but it just doesn't go well with my brain.

> > And, since when do hard facts matter anyway?
>
> When certain individuals claim that more Java people know about Ruby
> than they do about Python.

First, that question was supposed to be rhetorical :) Second, my claim
is not that general. Certainly proving such a general claim is an
enormous undertaking. It just happens that most of Java developers I
know, and I know quite a lot since I've been doing this for years, they
know Ruby and Rails. Python, Django, Turbogears, make them go "huh?".
I've heard of one entrepreneurial guy starting an exclusively RoR shop
and doing quite well at it. I haven't heard a Django/Turbogears shop
yet.

> I know that there are people out there who
> know (about) Java but not about Jython, for example, but even in
> circles where buzz and hype seem like everything (eg. marketing) the
> hard facts or statistics are still critical because they actually help
> those people do their job properly. Moreover, just stating something
> doesn't make it true - the hard facts serve to prove or disprove such
> assertions, and to anyone serious about understanding the underlying
> phenomena, it's vital to seek those facts out.

True. But since when do hard facts matter? That is, it's not that I
haven't tried to make people know how great Python is. but I can talk
until I'm blue in the face and they just go, "nah". What I'm saying is
that people (and management) unfortunately are sold to not with hard
facts, but with whatever that X viral factor is. And for some reason
the RoR crowd has managed to make it quite viral.

> > I've met a number of
> > people who've told me they'd program in Eiffel if they could. And hey,
> > perhaps in its day Eiffel *was* the best OO language out there.
> > Certainly it looked cleaner than C++! :)
>
> So why don't they? Management pressure? Why don't people write more
> Python in their day job? Any suggestions?

Well, I posted in this group a few weeks ago because I was trying to
convince the managers to give Python a try and was looking for
additional ammo. In the end Django is out because of its lack of
support for Oracle. But it's a catch 22 isn't it? We're a Java shop so
our developers are trained in Java, Struts, Tomcat, etc. Any switch to
a dynamic language will be a huge change. However it baffles me that
they are open to at least a PoC in Rails. but when I suggested Python,
they went: "nah we're not interested in Python. Rails it is."

*shrugs* whatever it is, those guys are doing something right.

> Paul