Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...

An opinion's entertainment value suffers from wear and tear. When you hear something over and over such as Ruby on Rails is not ready for the enterprise, it is likely to become dull. But its truth value does not...



An opinion that was true on its first outing does not become false through overuse. Yet it is a common objection to an opinion - as if it constituted a refutation - that we have heard it all before. Opinions and arguments are dismissed as pedestrian, plodding, obvious, tire and so on.

Such objections might be to the point if we were discussing radio plays or striptease shows, but they are irrelevant when considering the truth of an opinion. The blogger may be shamed into silence but his opinion is not thereby show false.



On the contrary, most truths are apt to become familiar and unexciting. No one thrills to the idea that the earth orbits the sun like they used to. But this new blase attitude has not altered the structure of the solar system. Equally, most fiction is surprising and not in the least dull to read, but it remains fiction for all that.

The best refutations also tend to draw on facts that are tediously obvious. How better can you refute an opinion than by showing it to be inconsistent with something well-known to be true? Are the below fact tediously obvious when it comes to Ruby on Rails?

• No large analyst firm has spent any time researching Ruby uptake nor have any of their clients asked them to?


• No Indian outsourcing firm and their bloggers have even indirectly hinted at the fact that they are using it for large enterprise applications?


• Even though there are lots of Enterprise Architects who use Ruby outside of work, they never felt it was worth the time to talk about it in any meaningful way at work?


• If you were to write a mission-critical enterprise application on a Java platform to support 5,000 concurrent users it would be 50X faster than anything the Ruby community could dream of? It would also outscale Ruby by factors?


• Using independent tools from software vendors such as Fortify or Ounce Labs, that Java is more secure than Ruby out of the box?


• Maybe we should simply trust all those large consulting firms who are doing Ruby but simply haven't published any case studies on it? I wonder why they are publishing case studies on other technologies though?


• Curious to know if Ruby has so much potential, how come Venture Capital firms haven't attempted to monetize Ruby? Would they lose money if they attempted it?


• Can you point to a single Fortune 200 enterprise whose primary business isn't technology and a single revenue-generating mission-critical system built using Ruby? If you can't, could you at least speculate as to when you think this will happen?


• Can anyone name a single Fortune 200 enterprise whose primary business isn't technology and a single publicly available case study on how they believe they should pay attention to the productivity of individual developers? For every one you find, I will find at least ten who have reduced individual developer productivity in pursuit of more important goals

If you are going to amplify or trackback, please do not consider even for a moment the perspective I represent. If a single blogger responds in this manner with a 100% positive thoughtful detailed response to each point, I will donate $100 to a charity of mutual agreement. Help keep monies in my pocket and away from a good cause by either excerising your right to remain silent or reverting to throwing daggers...