This article by Bruce Eckel discusses the book "Beyond Java" by Bruce Tate, in which Tate discusses Ruby on Rails and a few other things. For those who don't know, Eckel is the author of one of the most popular Java books ever, "Thinking in Java."
The article is full of good quotes and has a fun snarky attitude to it. I will warn you now, he doesn't like Perl. However, he does recognize that Perl brought something important to the table, and it's nice to read a piece by someone with a little more cool-headed view of the Java vs. Ruby showdown that is filling oreillynet.com these days.
Here are some choice quotes:
...almost at the end of the book he declares that he doesn't have time to learn these other languages in any depth -- although he has no trouble condemning the same languages in his rush to Ruby.
Ruby is to Perl what C++ was to C.
The backlash from heavyweight web frameworks has been significant. We now know that EJB 1 & 2 were based on an entirely flawed set of use cases.
I think we've mostly been hearing from people who have come from Perl and found Ruby to be a "better Perl, with objects that work," or people who are finally convinced that dynamic languages have merit, and so mix the enthusiasm of the first time dynamic language user (quite a rush, as I remember from my 2-month experience with Perl many years ago) with their experience of Ruby.
