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Java… and Ruby/Rails and Python…

Blogged on May 30, 2008 at 20:30

After 5pm today, I was talking with a colleague at the office about how I despise Java. At the office, we use Java for a lot of our “business logic” apps, and have chosen to use a Java web frontend for a portfolio web application we’re developing. Well… I didn’t get to vote in on that since I got here after the choice had already been made. The following months we’re horrible: neither me (non-programmer, working more on the UI side of things) or him (the actually in-house programmer, an “all-java” guy) liked the application we had to develop and customize and so you can imagine how it went. All of this brought up the discussion Java vs Others, mainly because even though he didn’t like what we were (actually, we still are :/) using, he swears by Java in most of the issues. I, on the other hand, hated Java on the desktop because it’s so slow and bloated and the little experience I was having developing with it was being extremely painful: re-deploying the app (Ant) and restarting Tomcat every time I changed the CSS or XSL (yikes.. hate that too!) was extremely discouraging. Not to mention having to use Eclipse to make it all a little easier (3 scripts had to be run to re-deploy the app).

Well, jumping back to today, after I got mixed up in my arguments because I don’t know Java that well, he sarcastically sent me this link: Java, Ruby, and even Python Suck. Quite an entertaining article I should say, but what I really thought interesting were his points and the reactions on the comments. Make sure you read that article to have a good laugh (especially the section on Python) and follow the comment stream…

But I’ll transcribe my comment because I think it pictures how I feel about those 3 languages:

Interesting how I got here via a Java programmer, who is acknowledging that Rails (Groovy actually) is possibly the way we should go corporately. I don’t know any of the 3 but I’ll learn Ruby/Rails for “work” and I’m learning Python on my own. Of all the languages, Python is the one that attracts me the most BECAUSE of the whitespace and visual organization. I’m coming from the design field and even the little that I coded before (mainly PHP and Javascript) I cared about how my code was structured and commented. Talking to seasoned developers, they appreciate that I do that and we can all work together a lot more easily.

But all this to say:
1. Java does sucks… especially as a framework! In the last 10y, all the Java apps I used got throwned in the recycle bin because they are… SLOW (main problem with OpenOffice going mainstream IMO)
2. Ruby, especially Rails, is booming because it’s fast and easy to develop on and highly maintainable. Also, Rails developers are usually Apple users (like myself) and tend to be very dedicated to their “preferences” and even “evangelistic” about it… I see a great future ahead for Rails.
3. Python is an extremely versatile language that you can easily use to develop a command-line script on your box, integrate with excellent frameworks (like PyGTK) to develop very good looking applications, already has a great MVC (Django) and I’m sure more will come, and has a great community because it is a language that has been around for a while (since 1991).

Again, that’s why I won’t learn Java and will learn both Rails and Python.

My preference??? Python.

Oh, and great article! ;)

What do you think?? ;)

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