Comments on: Will a language scale? Wrong question! http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question Anecdotes on Java, Ruby, Sysadmin, SEO, Design, and Management Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:05:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Todd Huss http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-273 Todd Huss Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:25:04 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-273 We made the decision as group but I was definitely leaning towards Java and lobbying for it! At the time (late 2003 - early 2004) I felt that Java had the best offering for productive web development with a good choice of MVC frameworks, OR Mapping, IoC, testing frameworks, etc... If we were going through the same selection process now I might lean more towards using Ruby on Rails as I find it a little more productive personally because you don't need to spend as much time integrating frameworks, dealing with deployment, recompiling and generally dealing with the issues that go along with all of that. That said, I'm really pleased with our Java setup at GreatSchools and I think it's proven to be a great fit for us. Now that we're past the framework integration issues and running smoothly on it I find it to be very productive and to be honest, I still slightly prefer Java as a language over Ruby. I just think Rails is a stronger and more comprehensive web framework. We made the decision as group but I was definitely leaning towards Java and lobbying for it! At the time (late 2003 - early 2004) I felt that Java had the best offering for productive web development with a good choice of MVC frameworks, OR Mapping, IoC, testing frameworks, etc…

If we were going through the same selection process now I might lean more towards using Ruby on Rails as I find it a little more productive personally because you don’t need to spend as much time integrating frameworks, dealing with deployment, recompiling and generally dealing with the issues that go along with all of that.

That said, I’m really pleased with our Java setup at GreatSchools and I think it’s proven to be a great fit for us. Now that we’re past the framework integration issues and running smoothly on it I find it to be very productive and to be honest, I still slightly prefer Java as a language over Ruby. I just think Rails is a stronger and more comprehensive web framework.

]]> By: Chris Kimm http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-270 Chris Kimm Thu, 30 Mar 2006 06:13:50 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-270 >The real question is how productive people will be in the language... Since GreatSchools is a Java shop, does this mean that you've found Java to be the most productive language? >The real question is how productive people will be in the language…
Since GreatSchools is a Java shop, does this mean that you’ve found Java to be the most productive language?

]]> By: Todd Huss http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-255 Todd Huss Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:47:54 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-255 Slava, I agree that there are some cases where a lower level language like C or even Assembly makes sense but I'm talking about the general question everyone keeps asking when they say "Will language X scale" where X is a high level modern language used for solving general business problems. I will grant you that if you're asking it in the context of writing a global weather simulator then it might be a worthwhile question, but for writing a website, webservices, database driven application, batch processing job, etc... it's a silly question because 99.9% of the time you can scale the application horizontally via hardware less expensively than you can scale developer productivity. Slava, I agree that there are some cases where a lower level language like C or even Assembly makes sense but I’m talking about the general question everyone keeps asking when they say “Will language X scale” where X is a high level modern language used for solving general business problems.

I will grant you that if you’re asking it in the context of writing a global weather simulator then it might be a worthwhile question, but for writing a website, webservices, database driven application, batch processing job, etc… it’s a silly question because 99.9% of the time you can scale the application horizontally via hardware less expensively than you can scale developer productivity.

]]> By: Slava Pestov http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-254 Slava Pestov Tue, 28 Mar 2006 01:21:00 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-254 Any computationally-intensive project requires a fast language. Many projects have nothing to do with databases or frameworks. Any computationally-intensive project requires a fast language. Many projects have nothing to do with databases or frameworks.

]]> By: Dion Almaer http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-253 Dion Almaer Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:37:54 +0000 http://gabrito.com/post/will-a-language-scale-wrong-question#comment-253 Todd, Hear, hear. I totally agree with you. My scaling skills all revolve around how to Give the DB a Break via caching at all levels. This is pretty darn easy for web applications. There are some large enterprise applications that do need different thinking, and for those I won't use certain tech stacks. But, this has been 1 or 2 projects in my lifetime ;) Cheers, Dion Todd,

Hear, hear. I totally agree with you. My scaling skills all revolve around how to Give the DB a Break via caching at all levels.

This is pretty darn easy for web applications. There are some large enterprise applications that do need different thinking, and for those I won’t use certain tech stacks. But, this has been 1 or 2 projects in my lifetime ;)

Cheers,

Dion

]]>