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"Ruby on Rails" ? Is there a good reason for the name, or were you watching too many old western train movies?

Here has a discussion of the name in RoR's early time (2007). Also, it seems that many people do not even know what Ruby on Rails is. My company is still using it and I am the only person develop and maintain the application... Not a bad web frame work at all.

"No one cares about ruby. It's a dying little niche language."

Hahahaha! That's the funniest thing I have read all day.

According to ">the TIOBE Index, Ruby moved up on the list again this month.

When compared to 2007, yes, Ruby did move down one spot on the list, from 9 to 10. But that's largely because Objective-C came out of nowhere and is now at the top of the A list. During the same period, Perl moved down 2 points, PHP moved down 2 points, Visual Basic moved down 4 points, etc.

Other similar sites show similar results. Statistically, what you say is just nonsense.

There has also just recently started a movement to establish Ruby as a more frequently used language in the sciences, because it lends itself to such applications quite well, and has among the richest set of code libraries (Gems, in Ruby) out there.

"(It didn't even get a step method to its range class until 1.8.7)"

Completely untrue. Here is documentation of someone complaining about a potential regression error in step for ranges when Ruby went to version 1.8.6. So obviously it existed even before then.

If this is the same system as I remember reading about before it was setup by a Brit entrepreneur with GNURadio:
  http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/153689

It sounds like a very inspiring story for geeks & radio enthusiast entrepreneurs.

His software is of course, closed source so I can't say much more than that.I can't find the website now. I think he focusses on shopping malls but it can work anywhere and if you got the cash he'd probably do that for you.

The bit I don't understand is how he communicates the movement to the customer. In my mind I imagined a full map but it could be more simple; just indicating which shop is closest.

I think the company is called Path Intelligence?
http://groups.google.com/group/london-hack-space/browse_thread/thread/564ac80ec04b8b3f
http://www.pathintelligence.com/en/products/footpath/footpath-technology

The patent:
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=EP&NR=1779133&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP

  -j

If most of your 900 controllers are just replicas of the standard restful controller (but... 900 different resources!?) you might be interested in the approach discussed at http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/202398#881349 Basically you move all the restful code in one "global restful controller" and derive all the restful controllers from it, much like we derive models from ActiveRecord. Most controllers are reduced to a def/end two-liner and the application is much more maintainable because you don't have to create all the index/show/edit/update/new/create methods in every single controller. You add methods or replace the default ones only where you need to implement special logic . The code is at http://gist.github.com/280611

I did not mention Python, but I feel like I should now. The main advantage I see there is speed, and the fact that python can be bytecode-compiled, in case writing closed-source apps is a requirement.

Also, both Python and Ruby have some sort of Java runtime port, though I have no idea what the status of them is.

I also feel like I should mention why I don't like Java: Compared to other languages, Java tends to be verbose, limited, and not really have any advantages other than a decent bytecode runtime. It was a reaction to the complexity of C++, but it solves that by removing features.

I'll point you to this discussion, in which points are made both ways about type safety. I like this quote in particular:

A team has to have ingrained discipline around unit tests and continuous integration. Once you have that, compiler is just an extremely weak and limited form of unit testing.

I tend to agree -- I think automated tests (unit and otherwise) are essential, and once you have that, your tests will tend to protect you from type errors.

That said, it's a big enough debate that there probably isn't one right answer, or at least, you will become a better programmer by learning about both sides. (The same goes for any major differences between languages. A quick list of languages to learn just to challenge how you think: JavaScript (as taught by Douglas Crockford), LISP, Haskell, Erlang, C (really), and a traditional OO language like C++, C#, or Java.)

I visit many of the same sites that you do. Freshmeat is essential for keeping up with the OSS community. As a professional programmer, I also need to know what's new when it comes to Python, Ruby and Mono, since those are the languages or platforms I use most often. Sites like the Ruby Forum [http://www.ruby-forum.com/], Planet Python [http://planet.python.org/], and Monologue [http://www.go-mono.com/monologue/] make doing that very easy. And for future language developments, I'm always sure to read Lambda the Ultimate [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/] and PLnews [http://plnews.org/]. And the comp.lang.misc newsgroup [http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.lang.misc/] is also a good place for information, too.

Ruby has a lot of work in the library department, and a HELL of a lot of work in the documentation department.