In between a few other small jobs I've been getting into Ruby, mainly for the rails side of things and a few; read 5, projects I have lined up.

Just wondering if anyone else has had looked over the edge?

I've having enough trouble with Perl these days, without even thinking about going there!

Plus customers who still persist in using Rexx......

Phil:(

Phil,

Although still getting my head around it; and doubt it will ever pay a morgage I really like it. Perl dev's are meant to get on okay with it, but in a similar way...passion over £££.

I do recall painfully dismissing java about 8 years ago as a heavy, unsuitable language for agile web development...the time of appletswas just dawning...it still is too heavy, but dammit why did I ignore it so, looking instead to asp and then php. We live and learn, but at least it keeps the old options open when looking at a project and choosing how to do it, even if it's always java now with IBM :(

I'm not making that mistake again, with large db support; i.e. not just mysql; emerging I think it may make a dent somewhere...

Yep, I know what you mean. Java apps are a nightmare to support, bacause of all the compatability issues.

MySQL, I would recommend getting into, and I'm trying to pick it up myself. A couple of the apps I support use MySQL, and it seems to be spreading.

Now, if someone would just go back to Fortran-77, or TI-980 assembler, I'd go back to programming!

Phil

Been using mysql (this site runs on the back of it) for about 5 years now with varying levels of depth. It is gaining a real momentum now and has been for a number of years.

You only have to consider the fact that MS and Oracle now have a free db. Ok mysql is not free, but few pay the fees for commercial use.

Cost aside, it's actually a bloody good db. V4 was a bit frustrating as you could not do clever SQL's, instead coming back into the language and progmatically processing data. Much better now in v5.

Db2 is another beast, but again derby is a capable if somewhat limited alternative.

The problem now is as you say compatability it's a flipping nightmare. One client said to me he'd love to use the opensource world, but for one simple reason...there is too much choice. If he goes with MS he knows he's getting one OS not 15 flavours of kernel x version y iteration z, he also knows he's getting "problems" but linux is not without them....so there it was, the choice was too much for him to trust his corporate systems to it....bizzare but oddly I had to agree with him.

Assembler...yay for the washing machines!

Oh well back to this java web application and it's mammoth code base to load a pretty picture.