Since working with Ruby and other dynamic languages, I’ve thought a lot about the differences between statically-typed and dynamically-typed languages and what makes them different. Statically-typed languages guarantee some level of confidence of workability — but this comes at a huge cost of flexibility, and more importantly overlaps with software testing, not making efficient use of the concept of testing.
Software testing can be used to make up for some of the lost confidence resulting from dynamic typing, yet since they must be done regardless, the outcome is suboptimal with static languages – there is an overlap between the confidence generated from static typing and the confidence generated from the test suite. With dynamic languages there is much less overlap: the test suite makes up for the confidence lost from dynamic typing, yet is also there to ensure the software works as expected.
Antagonistic attitudes towards Ruby and in particular Ruby on Rails abound. Many web developers feel uneasy about the rise of a strange new framework that is attracting disciples daily. I’ve casually chatted with a few people who have negative attitudes about Ruby and the most striking aspect about everyone I’ve spoken with is that after prodding a bit at their understanding and experience level with Ruby I find they only have a surface-level understanding of Rails and no experience whatsoever. I have not once found someone who was well-versed in both Ruby on Rails (as in.. has actually built an application using it) and in any of the other number of web technologies out there, who was not at the very least appreciative about Rails and optimistic about its future.
What I’m trying to get at here is that to appreciate Ruby you have to know Ruby, and know it well. A surface-level examination of Rails by myself over one year ago left me in the same ignorant state that many Ruby antagonists are at right now, complaining about Ruby’s ability to scale and the restrictive nature the Rails framework involves. Even reading a few chapters out of the Agile book might leave one with this characterization. Yet the more I began to understand Rails and even more importantly the dynamic Ruby programming language, the more positive my attitudes towards Rails were.
It’s interesting that I find this particular understanding imbalance even more widespread and frustrating in economics: to appreciate the free market, you have to understand the free market. So few people truly understand economics and as a result their arguments are ripe with economic fallacies and mischaracterizations of fact. Economists on average believe that the free market works significantly better than non-economists. This isn’t a conspiracy: it’s because they actually understand economics.
There will always be people in any field that attack something they don’t understand for whatever reason. Those making arguments against Rails at least owe it to their opponents to actually understand what they are talking about. I find such is rarely the case.
