I agree that TCO is more important than just rapid development. Its too early in Ruby on Rails for me to say based on experience if ROR will actually lower TCO. However, based on the development we've done so far, here's why we think it likely will:
1. We have a simpler relationship between the front & back end due to Active Record, so this should save time in adding or deleting database fields. 2. The total amount of code is about 1/10th what we had in.NET and its very easy to read, which should cut the learning curve of new developers who have to maintain the project over time. 3. The "Ruby on Rails" framework itself forces structure and makes it a bit harder for each developer to create an idiosyncratic piece of code, that no other developer is likely to understand. 4. The Ruby on Rails community seems to be a high proportion of very high end programmers who document many component solutions to common coding issues in a really deatailed way that has made it very easy to Google these solutions and incorporate it into our code. It seems to be another level of "Open Source" mentality beyond what we've seen in other open source platforms. The quality of the open source components so far has been consistantly high. The self documenting feature in Ruby on Rails also should lower TCO.
-Paul Levy
www.deepvertical.com
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I agree that TCO is more important than just rapid development. Its too early in Ruby on Rails for me to say based on experience if ROR will actually lower TCO. However, based on the development we've done so far, here's why we think it likely will: 1. We have a simpler relationship between the front & back end due to Active Record, so this should save time in adding or deleting database fields. 2. The total amount of code is about 1/10th what we had in .NET and its very easy to read, which should cut the learning curve of new developers who have to maintain the project over time. 3. The "Ruby on Rails" framework itself forces structure and makes it a bit harder for each developer to create an idiosyncratic piece of code, that no other developer is likely to understand. 4. The Ruby on Rails community seems to be a high proportion of very high end programmers who document many component solutions to common coding issues in a really deatailed way that has made it very easy to Google these solutions and incorporate it into our code. It seems to be another level of "Open Source" mentality beyond what we've seen in other open source platforms. The quality of the open source components so far has been consistantly high. The self documenting feature in Ruby on Rails also should lower TCO.
-Paul Levy
www.deepvertical.com