Ruby on Rails, a Microsoft Developer's Perspective

I suppose I'm a pretty hard core Microsoft developer. I've been doing Microsoft .Net C# development since the .Net framework was first released in 2002. Before that, starting in 1997 about when the technology was first released, I developed in Visual Basic with classic ASP (Active Server Pages). So that's twelve years of Microsoft development all told. Which is why the Ruby on Rails class I've been taking this week is so interesting. Ruby represents a significant branching out for me. So these are my initial impressions. I am a complete Ruby neophyte, so please keep all flames at least friendly in tone :).

Dynamic Typing

Let's get to the heart of this Ruby stuff. I thought I would passionately hate dynamic typing. I was getting ready to fill pages ranting about its evils. But that moment never came. Don't get me wrong the Visual Studio strongly typed intellisense no-reading-documentation-needed experience is far nicer than the NetBeans look-it-up-in-irb-with-.methods experience. But the feeling was more like mild to moderate annoyance rather than unbridled hatred. Like when I mistyped a variable and Ruby decided it was a new variable initialized as nil. Annoying, and hard to track down, but hey I'm a Ruby newbie, experts probably don't make these mistakes, right? Anyway, I would be interested to hear how non-trivial, well tested applications perform with refactoring (e.g. variables/fields in views?) and how bad things get during O&M.

Speed of Development

I figured speed of development would be Ruby's saving grace. It was that and more. The Ctrl-S-Alt-Tab-Ctrl-R-zero-delay development cycle is frickin' amazing! It made development feel more fun than it has in a long time. Part of that may be the slower-than-molasses-in-December speed of development I experience today on my (not 2010) SharePoint project. Regardless, even if I were working in an ASP.Net MVC project I suspect the extra speed of development in Rails by skipping the main compilation and JIT compilation steps would increase the enjoyment of a Ruby project enough to equal out the lack of strong typing.

Active Record vs LINQ

Perhaps I'm just not experienced enough with active record, but to me the syntax feels contrived, non-intuitive, and just kind of agitating. I mean it's cool that you can write

p = Person.find_all_by_first_name_and_last_name("Lee", "Richardson")

Ugly as sin, but cool. The alternative doesn't feel much better:

p = Person.all(:conditions => { :first_name => "Lee", :last_name => "Richardson" })

Uch. Of course I am biased. I'm passionate about LINQ. I love LINQ more than any single feature in Microsoft development. I think LINQ may be the most brilliant stroke of genius Microsoft (Anders Hejlsberg) has ever had. And I don't think I realized how passionately I felt about the technology until I didn't have it. So for me I'll stick with:

Person p = ctx.People.Where(p => p.FirstName == "Lee" && p.LastName == "Richardson");

Duck Typing

My mind was blown when the instructor showed us polymorphism without inheritance. I can't argue about how incredibly powerful it is. I just cringe to think of the potential misuse. But without any real Ruby experience I'll have to just leave it at "Wow!"

Mocking

It's pretty scary that you can override the functionality of any method anywhere in Ruby. But when the instructor showed us overriding DateTime.now for the purposes of mocking I had an "ah ha!" moment. Mocking DateTime.Now in C# is an awful experience that involves an intermediate class with a virtual "Now()" method. Ruby sure got C# on that one.

YAML

It's no secret that I passionately hate XML. And it's no secret that Microsoft passionately loves XML. Pity about the mismatch. Ruby on Rails really endeared itself to me when its designers recognized that XML is a travesty against humanity and used YAML Ain't Markup Language instead. Nice!

Interactive Ruby Console

The Interactive Ruby Console (IRB) is just wonderful. Now I can at least get that functionality today in C# with Joe Ferner's excellent Developer's Toolbox. What I can't get is the Interactive Rails Console (ruby script/console). Now that is awesome. I can't wait for C# 4.0 which I suspect will have this. For now RoR++, C#-- .

Tooling

I'm not sure how related this is to dynamic typing, but surprisingly I really, really missed Visual Studio. Perhaps RubyMine is better that NetBeans. I sure wasn't impressed with Komodo. I just felt like constantly switch between my IDE and various console windows, and a database viewer felt clumsy yet somehow necessary with Rails. It just felt so 1999.

Summary

There's no doubt about it, I could be very happy on a Ruby project. The no XML thing is just a perk, the fast development cycles and bringing fun back to coding again is truly awesome. But am I ready to give up Microsoft development full time just yet? No way. LINQ, strong typing, and believe it or not Visual Studio tip the scales back to about equal. Now if only Microsoft could somehow make compilation instantaneous.