Ruby tools vs. Java tools... - History is a guide....



In response to this link: "tools_matter_don_t_handicap"; about Ruby tools not being up to where Java tools are I posted this comment which I thought others may want to read as well. One thing to know is that the first part was an answer to the inference made in his post that you needed static typing to do refactoring tools.

My reply:

Re-factoring has nothing to do with typing and the worlds first Re-factoring tools were created for Smalltalk and actually before that Lisp (those seem to be forgotten by most).

Tools is an area that Java is way ahead in now, but remember, when Java started it had nothing as well and it took 5 years to get to the first really good environments. (First JBuilder and then a few years later Eclipse and IDEA).

Additionally, Ruby is a much more powerful language in terms of features so there are those of us who trade off the tools aspect for the power. Much like Lisp or Smalltalk programmers do. But this is changing. Ruby plug-ins exist for Eclipse, Ruby is gaining more attention from those who lead the charge to Java and are now looking for the "Next Big Thing" and just like with Java, Ruby has the possiblity to grow to encompase things you see as problems now, much as Java has.

Don't lock yourself out of using a great new tool because of it's short term problems, especially if those problems are being addressed and those who have a history of picking the next thing seem to be excited as well.

Java as a technology is mature now and much like C++, you will not see a lot of new things being added to it any more. Not at the language level. Libraries and things, but as a language Java is all but done. That being said, you've reached it's expressive power and as a community you are now adding to it by using meta expressions thru the annotations in 1.5. While flexible, this is not as powerful as actually being able to extend the language. Java tools will continue to get better and frameworks and libraries are continuing to grow, but there is also a trend towards lighter, smallter, faster development. Ruby is in that vein as well. Lighter, faster, smaller. And you will find that there are many powerful tools for writing code and debugging. They just don't have a pretty GUI on top of them.

Posted: Sat - March 12, 2005 at 03:35 PM        

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