Ruby on Rails has been a buzz word for a while amongst code hacker circles. Right.

However I recently noticed (eg finalist at the Technology of the Year 2007 contest by developer.com Gamelan) that the hype was getting more and more professional.

Ruby on Rails is a database-driven web application development framework cherished by many independent programmers, computer science nerds and IT professionals hacking code at night from home. It seems, at least to me, that Ruby on Rails is now starting to be considered as a serious option within IT service companies and software publishers.

On Ruby’s shortcomings first:

- few web hosting companies support Ruby. Ruby indeed is interpreted on the server itself by a program named Rails, and unlike .Net or Apache (php, Java), it’s Rails isn’t really a standard yet.

- Unlike Java or .Net, Ruby isn’t supported by any major technology company. Ruby’s genuine independence may damper market adoption (no push) and cause crucial features (see next point) to be available at a delay.

- Crucial features like packaging (to my knowledge, not yet possible to build a setup file to automatize program installation) or Excel files manupulation aren’t yet available to the developer community. Catalogue extensions are under the responsiblity of..nobody. Independent passionate people take care of new developments, and since Ruby on Rails is still young, one may consider this technology to be as of today immature.

On Ruby’s advantages then:

- From a user view point, and unlike Flash or javascript and therefore Ajax, there’s no issue about Ruby applications form to differ from one browser to another – thanks to Rails interpreting the code in Ruby. In other words, Ruby web developments are compatible with all browsers and the app will always display.

- A steep learning curve: Indeed, Ruby is simple to learn and use (a couple tutorials will do).

- Productivity: the bulk of developers taking to Ruby quickly start to evangelize the language. This is a fact. . helps optimizes development of web applications with back-end databases through a crystal-clear code structure pattern: controllers, the model and HMI are well separated in the development environment. An app hacked in Ruby is very likely to be much (roughly between 15% and 30%, but it all depends on the talent of the developer behind it) shorter than the same app devised in php or Java (in my opinion the .Net framework in general and Visual Studio in particular really enhances productivity as well).

- Ruby code is highly readable, even for non geeks.

My call on Ruby on Rails: as more and more IT service companies use it, especially in the US where Ruby devs have been mushrooming, and thanks to an operational set of interfaces with all major databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, etc.), I believe Ruby will become a mainstream language for Web 2.0 and SaaS web applications requiring permanent access to relational databases pretty soon. When? I’d say within one year, the time for trainings to spread out and business clients to become less picky with yet immature development frameworks.

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