Much talk about RoR and will it go mainstream and blah.
I was recently asked by someone managing a RoR project why it was moving so slowly. When i inquired as to the skill-sets of the programmers involved the manager replied, "they used to be our dreamweaver guys".
OK, i thought, looking worried.
I suggested the quality of the programmers may be a factor. He looked at me puzzled, offended even. THESE GUYS ARE PERFECTLY FINE. THEY ARE WEB PROFESSIONALS. He said this with his eyes. Not with his mouth.
Matter of factly, i said, "You may need better programmers. Ruby is a powerful language."
It was like breaking bad news to a sick child. I felt really bad afterwards.
Right now i program in PHP5 with Zend 5 and the IDE, coupled with the vast array of third party libraries, cancels out the productivity boosts of Ruby the language (which is more powerful than php) and Rails the framework (which is more powerful than our homegrown php framework).
Third party libraries play an important role in all this. GEM is under-populated right now. Though gems seem to be consistently of a higher quality than a lot of the things you'll find on PEAR or CPAN, there's just not enough out there.
Will RoR become mainstream?
All i can say is:
Talent does not scale well.
A good ruby developer has demonstrably better OOP skills than a good php developer. The php developer may be better, you just have no way of knowing, because he hasn't access to as many OOP features. To run a successful RoR project you have to hire high quality ruby programmers, there's no middle ground. IMO a lot of web programmers will not migrate productively to python/ruby. Their heads will hurt and they won't program to the strengths of the language and their design will be off and it'll be PAIN PAIN PAIN for other developers on their team.