Some Questions

[Giuseppe luigi Punzi ruiz]

Hi all,

At the moment, I need to start some projects in my job.
- One, is a POS (Point of Sale) with a backend for control inventory,
products, etc..
- Other, is a HelpDesk soft to control our clients.
- Another, is a script to do some usual task in a MSAccess database

All of this, may run on Windows, Linux, and I will develop from Mac.

I tought about develop it on Squeak/Smalltalk, but I would like to try
other languaje, and, as I can see, Ruby is similar, all are object (I
love OOP)

At the moment, I'm not interested on web programming, RoR, or similar
(in future, for some projects or diferent interface, probably). Then,
this are my doubts...

- Speed: I readed about Ruby is slooooooow. I want to know if is
veeeeryyy slooow for a Desktop application (medium, large projects).

- Librarys: I need GUI building software (some portable UI? with gui
builder?), DataBase access, ¿Object Databases? there are a good
collection of librarys for day by day? All I read about Ruby is about
Rails.

- Support: I'm new to ruby, and I will need some help. Other lists?
or this is the main?

Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry for my bad english.

 

[Lorenzo E. Danielsson]

Hi all,

At the moment, I need to start some projects in my job.
- One, is a POS (Point of Sale) with a backend for control inventory,
products, etc..
- Other, is a HelpDesk soft to control our clients.
- Another, is a script to do some usual task in a MSAccess database

All of this, may run on Windows, Linux, and I will develop from Mac.

I tought about develop it on Squeak/Smalltalk, but I would like to try
other languaje, and, as I can see, Ruby is similar, all are object (I
love OOP)

At the moment, I'm not interested on web programming, RoR, or similar
(in future, for some projects or diferent interface, probably). Then,
this are my doubts...

- Speed: I readed about Ruby is slooooooow. I want to know if is
veeeeryyy slooow for a Desktop application (medium, large projects).

Ruby is slow for some tasks. Looking at your application list, I doubt
that will affect you much. But no, you would not choose Ruby for Quake 5.

The best thing to do is to give it a test. I find that Gtk and Qt
applications written in Ruby start up slower than there C/C++
counterparts but don't necessarily run much slower. But I don't have
much experience with GUI programming.

Consider execution speed vs. development speed. In many cases you need
to complete an application in a fairly short time. Ruby is good at that.
Sometimes you need applications that run at a high speed. Ruby is not so
good at that.

The applications you listed usually spend most of their time displaying
a form and waiting for the user to complete forms, etc. I cannot imagine
that Ruby is slower at waiting for a user than <any other language>.

The server side is where you could start to run into performance issues,
at least if you have a large number of people connecting to the
applications simultaneously. You'd have to write some small test cases,
emulate the expected load and see how well Ruby degrades.

- Librarys: I need GUI building software (some portable UI? with gui
builder?), DataBase access, ¿Object Databases? there are a good
collection of librarys for day by day? All I read about Ruby is about
Rails.

Portable toolkits: Qt, Gtk2, Tk, Swing (if you use JRuby), probably others.

- Support: I'm new to ruby, and I will need some help. Other lists?
or this is the main?

IRC is good. This list is good. Google is good.

Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry for my bad english.

One last thing: you stated that you need to write these applications for
your job. As much as I love Ruby and would encourage you to learn it
because it makes life so damn sweet, what is your time-frame? Is this
the right time to learn a new language? If time is of the essence it
might be advisable to stick to what you already know.

Just my thoughts,
Lorenzo

 

[Giuseppe luigi Punzi ruiz]

Ruby is slow for some tasks. Looking at your application list, I doubt
that will affect you much. But no, you would not choose Ruby for Quake
5.

I don't need Quake 5, and I don't want it

The best thing to do is to give it a test. I find that Gtk and Qt
applications written in Ruby start up slower than there C/C++
counterparts but don't necessarily run much slower. But I don't have
much experience with GUI programming.

Consider execution speed vs. development speed. In many cases you need
to complete an application in a fairly short time. Ruby is good at that.
Sometimes you need applications that run at a high speed. Ruby is not so
good at that.

The applications you listed usually spend most of their time displaying
a form and waiting for the user to complete forms, etc. I cannot imagine
that Ruby is slower at waiting for a user than <any other language>.

The server side is where you could start to run into performance issues,
at least if you have a large number of people connecting to the
applications simultaneously. You'd have to write some small test cases,
emulate the expected load and see how well Ruby degrades.

I don't need a fast startup. I need fast operations clicking buttons
thath add products to a ticket to sell. Don't have to wait 20 seconds to
retrieve 1000 clients from a SQL database or to change some parameters
on a products table with 20000 records, etc...

A Disco for example, need to do this things fast. The startup speed
is'nt a problem. For this projects I don't need many users at the same
time (10?, 20? for example)

Portable toolkits: Qt, Gtk2, Tk, Swing (if you use JRuby), probably
others.

I'm checking the posible options, if I can't find a portable toolkit,
and a binding updated, then, I will need to develop over web if I choose
Ruby as option, but, wxRuby for example, seems to be updated.

IRC is good. This list is good. Google is good.

Perfect

One last thing: you stated that you need to write these applications for
your job. As much as I love Ruby and would encourage you to learn it
because it makes life so damn sweet, what is your time-frame? Is this
the right time to learn a new language? If time is of the essence it
might be advisable to stick to what you already know.

The time is not a problem for this projects. The time will be essential
for update, upgrade or add features this projects, but then, I think we
will have experience for this. Otherwise, we have experience in other
languajes, and I hope the "jump" will not much difficult.

Just my thoughts,
Lorenzo

Thanks a lot Lorenzo.