Searching for Ruby on Rails will give you only two responses. When you search at ezines, that is. I found that very curious. So the next time you will search for it you will at least find three. And I will remove this article when this amount will not increase soon (please remind me about this).

There are as many computer languages as there are natural languages. Natural languages decrease in number, where computer languages are born during the time you have been on a holiday.

Smalltalk was, by the time quite revolutionary in the sense that it appeared rather natural. Like real small talk. But more important was the fact that it was object oriented (OO). This means that the language simulates not only natural language (if you are not familiar with computer languages you should check this, because it is only relatively true) but also it is able to describe the world more accurate, because of using objects.

One of the disadvantages of OO languages is the fact that you (needed) to describe this world first before you could do anything with it (the real programming). The other nuisance about OO was the fact - and Im not an expert - that it is rather un-commercial. Maybe for the same reason. Another problem with OO was that in real life, the computer infrastructure was not at all OO-like and you needed to convert your objects to flat database structures. This lowered the performance of OO-applications and the design process was elaborate. Only once when you had build up your own OO-infrastructure you where able to get to speed. Maybe not quite the same, but the learning curve was high.

The first problem describing the world could be solved by using Rails. Rails provide you frameworks with ready to use libraries. What also could be solved is the learning curve, the translation into normal database structure appears to be solved automatically (internally). Ruby has been introduced since 1993, but the Rails are new. And it would be worthwhile following this development.

2006 Hans Bool