The name of this blog implies it's subject, so I'll go directly to trying to explain why this isn't YARJC:
- I recently started working on a completely new product, where I'm in charge of ther server side. I'm going to code it twice, in parallel - one time in Java and another in Ruby. So this isn't just a comparison based on the a posteriori implementation in Rails of an existing Java app.
- The product involves a rich client, built with Eclipse RCP. This is not a web application. In fact, we expect to invest 60%+ of the development effort on the client application. Client and server are going to communicate via SOAP.
- It's an enterprise application. That means that it'll have to scale, it'll be installed (if successful of course :) ) at many customer locations, support customizations by professional support, and it's likely to go through multiple versions, with new developers coming in and rapidly taking over.
- Also, an important part of the spec involves working closely with other products, some by my company, some 3rd party, most (if not all) are Java apps. Most of these products have open API via web services, so in principle we shouldn't care, but at least in one case there's also a RMI interface, which is vastly faster. We'll see.
That's about it for now. In the coming months I'm planning to blog on my progress. Hopefully this'll turn out to be a good reference case for other enterprise Java developers wondering if it's time to make the switch.
Oh, and I still need to explain my motives for doing this. I'll do that in the next post. Promise.
