Re: FN-FORUM: What's the best development platform for creating Web 2.0 business applications?

date posted 20th November 2007 10:13

Quoting Ben Moxon [EMAIL REMOVED]

[snip]
> From the toolset you have you probably don't need anything else- you
> will probably never need to learn another language again. That doesn't
> mean it's not worth doing. Every time I learn a new language the things
> I take from it go back and inform how I use all the others and for that
> alone I find it's worth continuing to learn new things just to keep my
> brain in gear. In "The Pragmatic Programmer" - probably the best book on
> our craft yet written - they recommend learning a new programming
> language every year.

While I agree that it'd be great to be able to learn a new language =20
every year, I find that in all honest my headspace is finite on these =20
things. I regularly use PHP 4 and 5 and ASP (depending on client) and =20
can still do VB when I have to. In addition there's still all the guff =20
for HTML, XML, SGML, SQL and CSS floating in my head as well - I know =20
they're not programming languages, but they're large dollops of =20
syntax, attributes, entites etc. that are still there - as well as =20
umpteen other bits of information.

Adding in another full programming language *per year* ? I think my =20
brain would explode. I do play with others - and, as per Pragmatic =20
Programmer - take a lot away from them. But learn them fully? No, I =20
admit, I don't do that.

It's also a fair old time constraint. I'm currently working on four =20
projects simultaneously, and that situation doesn't change much =20
throughout the year. Sure the projects change, but the number of them =20
doesn't. So spending the extra downtime learning a new language =20
becomes somewhat lower on the priority chain, I'm afraid.

>
> Ruby is great in that it has almost no learning curve, it just gets out
> of the way and lets you write the code you need to. Really pleasant to
> work with. As for Rails, I think there is something to be said for it
> that everyone who has used it immediately goes to replicate it on their
> favourite platform, just because it has so many fantastic ideas in
> there. Nothing that nobody else couldn't have thought of, but stuff that
> when it's put together just makes sense.

I'm going to be the nay-sayer on this one, I'm afraid. I just never =20
got into Ruby/Rails to any serious degree, and found that when I tried =20
to do stuff with it, it became too complex too quickly. Admittedly =20
this is three years ago now, and I haven't used it since - mainly =20
because I haven't needed to. If I did need to, I'd use it, but 'til =20
that point...

Alex
http://www.ozbon.com