why ruby?

as usual a few eyebrows raised when i mentioned that i needed ruby programmers. the reason was partly because i don't carry myself around as a programmer (i'm more well known as a security conslutant, to my detriment). inside of programming, if the topic ever crops out, is that i do perl and mostly php. some said that i have (or rather had) the knack for finding good looking java programmers. but let's focus on the question: why ruby?

to be frank, ruby solves what java (or j2ee) solves, have more or less the same features as python and php. heck, even .NET solves some of the inherent problems that come with web application development: complexity, flexibility, usability and agility.

where ruby excels (and to be specific, rails) is that it solves these problems with such simplicity - a good example that i think most kl-lites can refer to is going to say berjaya times square (in KL) from PJ using only public transport. now you need to take the putra lrt, stop at masjid jamek, then take the star lrt and, lo and behold, you gotta find out the stop where you can hop into the monorail. but if you're on rails, you'll get to times square straight from kelana jaya without having the hassles to change trains and stations or figuring out where the nearest transfer stations are at. the other frameworks assume that you need the hand-holding to get things done, while rails just gets you there.

dj shadow - fixed income