Java Platform Web Applications Versus Ruby on Rails: This Time with Tools

This presentation was a disappointment at it didn't appear to compare issues in the real world. The intent was to compare Java to Ruby.

The presentation began by noting problems with Java, such as too fragmented, too complex, compiling decreases productivity, no high-level features, hard to setup project, bla, bla, bla. Then, the ease of how to create and setup a Ruby project was noted by running a command to install rails then setup a basic application (gem install rails ... rails my_app). This builds a working web application that can perform updates, creations, and deletes (CRUD) to a database. It was then discussed how easy and more productive a developer is due to less coding.

Rails is cool from the ease standpoint but does have numerous limitations. It is slow, cannot use more than one database (I think), does not handle internationalization, has a weak tool support.

In the end, the presenters were asked about coding a very complex application requiring business rules and complex validation. They noted that Java is better in this scenario.

It seems like comparing Java to Rails isn't equivalent to comparing apples-to-apples.