Comments on: Programming Languages, O’Reilly & The State Of Java

By: teh

teh — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:40:12 +0000

Ruby is nice and dandy. my co worker did some script tricks to do some text-file parsing. i said ok, thats fine. he is cool. now he is leaving and why do i have to learn ruby to fix the code left behind? i would prefer using java instead, no matter how painful. or at best Groovy.. Next time the young enthusiastic dude tries to push his fancy language to our throats i will be the first to stop him.

By: Mikkel G.

Mikkel G. — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:36:49 +0000

"Word on the street is that Ruby is officially dead. There was a bozo in my office that was pushing Ruby. Later we found out he was mistakenly hired. He had never programmed before and could not type. He did not understand Java. Claimed he wrote a book. After that I just figured everyone who likes Ruby is a nut case. Now that Ruby is dead, I was right all along."

What the hell - I hope your kidding. If not, your company seriously needs to review it's hiring process. Also, it's not cool to be an asshat just because Ruby or Java or Lisp is not your choice of technologies.

Ruby is far from dead and is even being embraced in many corporate environments (1). Considering there are interpreters being sponsored and written for Java, .NET, and even a sponsored alternative to the MRI, we will be with Ruby for a long time to come.

By the way, I'm a Java developer right now.

(1) http://workingwithrails.com/high-profile-organisations

By: JavaTek

JavaTek — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:01:34 +0000

dice.com 94K tek jobs total
16,532 Java jobs
742 Ruby Jobs

With the stats listed above, people are learning Ruby, buying books but there is very minimal demand out in the real world. Java is still King . You can go anywhere and find a high paying Java job right now. For now I will follow the money and use my time, effort and resources wisely until it pays to do otherwise.

All of yalls go out and learn Ruby while I take the higher paying Java job in your state because of depth of knowledge.

By: JavaTek

JavaTek — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:31:49 +0000

Word on the street is that Ruby is officially dead. There was a bozo in my office that was pushing Ruby. Later we found out he was mistakenly hired. He had never programmed before and could not type. He did not understand Java. Claimed he wrote a book. After that I just figured everyone who likes Ruby is a nut case. Now that Ruby is dead, I was right all along.

By: Georgi

Georgi — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:10:10 +0000

I am a Java developer and did not buy a Java book for years. Funny, though, that I bought a Ruby / RoR book. More fun: I never wanted to program Ruby, I just was curious whats it all about. And the punchline: I read the book nearly completely but I have no intention to change. I even did not install or test Ruby.

Question: How did I change the statics and would that change be valid for your conclusions?

By: Ivan Moscoso

Ivan Moscoso — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:30:57 +0000

Good point, George. The last two Java books I recall purchasing were Spring In Action, and Java Persistence With Hibernate. These books always prove to be great reference, not only for myself but others I'm working with who might not have them.

As far as other topics in the Java space, like you I tend to avoid books when online references seem to be plentiful. Still, there is the occasional exception.

By: George Frick

George Frick — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:30:18 +0000

I am a Java developer, I don't purchase books anymore. I'm on mailing lists for all the projects I use; and I read the Java site/blog for updates on the language.
Now programming languages are the new console wars?