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Development: What It Takes To Be Easy 
By Sean Corfield
Expert Author Article Date: 2007-06-15 Many of us have seen the (infamous) Ruby on Rails "Blog in 15 minutes" video and probably also Joe Rinehart's "Blog in 9 minutes" Model-Glue: Unity video. It makes it all look so easy. Wow! We should all use Ruby on Rails (or Model-Glue: Unity) because it will clearly make us so much more productive! Of course, as those folks who've struggled with Model-Glue: Unity (or Rails or any other framework) know only too well, it's not quite that simple! So why do some people struggle when others find these frameworks so easy and so productive? The answer is blindlingly obvious, unfortunately, but it isn't an answer most people want to hear. Sammy Larbi asks "is Rails easy?" and points to Venkat's blog entry "Can your cat code my Rails App?". The answer to both of these might seem obvious. The answer to the second question is clearly "no". The answer to the first question is, unfortunately, "it depends". As Venkat says: I asked why she thought developing with Ruby/Rails is so darn simple. She said she had seen a demo of a fully working app being created within minutes without much effort or code.The videos are, of course, somewhat misleading because they show what someone can do once they already know the framework really well. It's the same reason that experienced OO developers find OO so liberating and productive: they already know OO really well! Venkat compares C++ and Java, saying the latter is more productive with the following caveat: "I doubt anyone would say that Java makes an ignorant programmer more productive. You did have to take the time to learn the details of the language, the platform, and the API." The point behind all this is that there really is no silver bullet. Using a framework doesn't automatically make you more productive from day one. You have to learn how to really use your tools and sometimes that learning process is non-trivial to the point of seeming endless (and being a lot of hard work!). I post this because I got into a somewhat heated discussion at CFUNITED a few years back with someone who thought OO was dumb because they'd tried to use it and it made a mess of their application. I said that it takes time and effort to learn OO in order to be able to apply it properly. They got offended, thinking I was telling them they were too stupid to learn OO. I've repeatedly said: this stuff is hard. I started doing OO in January 1992 and I'm still learning. OO has mostly become second nature to me now but that doesn't preclude me from learning new techniques - often from people with less OO experience - that help make me more productive. So don't think that Rails is going to turn everyone into super-productive programmers overnight - most people coming to Rails already have a fair bit of Java and OO experience so pick up the concepts easily and, once they've learned the Ruby and Rails specifics, they can be more productive than they were in Java. It's the same principle that applies when you learn a new framework in ColdFusion. It may seem strange at first and may look like extra work but once you understand most of the specifics, you can be much more productive. Just be prepared for a learning curve. Comments About the Author: Sean is currently Senior Computer Scientist and Team Lead in the Hosted Services group at Adobe Systems Incorporated. He has worked in the IT industry for nearly twenty-five years, first in database systems and compilers (serving eight years on the ANSI C++ Standards Committee), then in mobile telecoms, and finally in web development. Sean is a staunch advocate of software standards and best practices, and is a well-known and respected speaker on these subjects. Sean has championed and contributed to a number of ColdFusion frameworks, and is a frequent publisher on his blog, http://corfield.org/ |
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